Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Article name in lower case for hertz, pascal etc.?

See my latest change from Hertz to hertz. Feel free to revert. Note it's named after Hertz that is upper case (in his article). The SI-units Hz (hertz) and Pa (pascal) are upper case and the MOS tells you to do that of course. Sometimes however people to not abbreviate and use hertz. But I've also seen Hertz. Using the lower case template might help people not do the wrong thing. I'm not saying we need to add a rule in the MOS (should we?), but at least the lower case template is not forbidden and even what it was made for? comp.arch (talk) 11:50, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I overlooked [[1]], and reverted. All agree to this? comp.arch (talk) 11:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• The SI units named after people, such as hertz & pascal, are used lowercase, yes, but that does not override the rule that the first word of a sentence, or title, is capitalized. Though I must admit not being familiar with sentences beginning with words like "hertz". "Hertz, as in 'the A/C current oscillates with a frequency of 60 hertz', is the SI unit named after Hertz" --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:12, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

I took a look at what Encyclopedia Britannica does: [2], and they use lower case. Even at the start of the first sentence. Maybe we should. The "lower case title template" is meant for things like iPod and eBay for the name of the page itself, because of technical restrictions. Maybe I should revert my revert? Note it also involved the Infobox. comp.arch (talk) 14:25, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

While it is interesting to see what Encyclopedia Britannica does, we don't base our titles on what one single source does (or even what a couple of sources do). We base them on what a significant majority of all reliable sources do. So... we would have to look at a lot of other sources. Now, if a significant majority of all reliable sources routinely present "hertz" with lower case h... even at the start of a sentence or in a title... then there is a valid argument that we should do so as well... per "COMMONNAME". (It would be a valid exception to the the norm indicated by our MOS.) Otherwise, no. Blueboar (talk) 16:22, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Article titles for common nouns in Wikipedia are capitalized, period. See Chicken, Water, Wavelength. This includes names of units of measurement. See Metre, Mile, Gallon, Degree (temperature), Kilowatt hour. bd2412 T 17:27, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• I don't think there is actually an explicit policy on this exact question – I looked all over the place, like at WP:NCCAPS and MOS:CAPS and MOS:TITLE – but I think there are two things supporting using an uppercase letter. First, there is a technical restriction to lowercase first letters, albeit not an insurmountable one. Second, MOS:CAPS does advise that "The initial letter in a sentence is capitalized" which suggests that the initial letter of a title is also always capitalized even if it doesn't say that. I'm not sure what to say about the fact that Britannica uses lowercase; dictionaries do, too. AgnosticAphid talk 19:00, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

The EB reference : "hertz, unit of frequency." This is not a sentence, but a dictionary-style definition. It's not an example of how the word is used in normal prose. 202.81.249.205 (talk) 13:24, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Amen to the comment by 2412.

Regardless of the etymology (that is, the origin or history) of a common noun, that word properly gets an uppercase initial letter when it appears in the title of a literary work (an article, book, or other work) -- as long as we use the title case (rather than the sentence case for a title).

There's nothing new, different, unsettled, questionable, weird, esoteric, or surprising about that rule or principle.

That's basic grade-school grammar.

We all are supposed to have learned it in the third or fourth grade.

Let's just use it and remember it – without fretting over it or quibbling about it.

What useful purpose do we seek to serve by trying to invent a new set of grammar rules in addition to (or instead of ) the settled, accepted, and established ones?

Best wishes to all,

Doc – DocRushing (talk) 19:11, 16 January 2014 (UTC).

Special disambiguation rules for titles of articles about churches?

I'd like comments on the topic of a heated discussion that recently erupted on my talk page, a couple of other users' talk pages, and one article talk page.

Another user has started agitating against the use of parenthetical place names (e.g., St. John the Baptist Church (Manhattan) or St. Michael's Catholic Church (Cedar Hill, Tennessee)) in the titles of articles about churches with otherwise ambiguous names. The user points out that many articles about churches (including article titles she created) currently do not follow the "parenthetical disambiguation" convention outlined in this policy, but instead set the location apart from the title with a comma (e.g., St John's Minster, Preston and Church of Our Saviour, Singapore). The user has informed me that "This is the way that it is done, across the world" and cites an unidentified guideline that I can't find (I thought it might be in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names), but I can't find the quoted text there, and of course that convention isn't intended to apply to local churches) as mandating the use of commas instead of parentheses for all entities (such as churches) that have addresses.

I believe that this other user is misinterpreting WP:Article titles and related naming conventions. It appears to me that some churches (particularly in the UK) are commonly known by names in the form "St John's Minster, Preston", so the comma is entirely appropriate for those article titles. However, this does not justify eliminating parentheticals for disambiguation of article titles for churches (like the U.S. examples I cited) that aren't commonly known by a "name-comma-place" sort of name. Further, it is likely that there are some church articles currently named with a comma "convention" (because of users who believe that all churches are named after the fashion of UK churches) that should have parenthetical disambiguation in keeping with WP:Article titles.

Thoughts and comments? --Orlady (talk) 05:15, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm the "other" user. As I've repeatedly told Amandajm, this appears to be a WP:ENGVAR issue: we routinely disambiguate buildings of all sorts with (Cityname, Statename), and Commonwealth users — e.g. English places such as Preston, and former colonies such as Singapore — routinely disambiguate churches with , Placename. Note that Amandajm always uses "St" for "Saint": the standard format for UK usage, but very rare here in the USA. Orlady and I have been given repeated comments, without any factual backing whatsoever, such as this one, in which the parenthetical convention is deemed to be as ridiculous as "State Capitol (Texas)" instead of "Texas State Capitol". Comments like this one demonstrate Amanda's problem: she's constantly assuming that a church here or there in the USA is "the church of a place", which although true for Church of England parish churches (which are found virtually everywhere in England), is patently not true for churches in the USA, where the absence of an established church and the multiplicity of denominations means that single-faith areas, while extant, are extremely rare and nowhere near worth being treated as a theoretical basis for our naming conventions. Ditto her comments about the abbeys and chapels: "chapels" in the USA are generally college buildings, cemetery funeral venues, etc., and abbeys are practically nonexistent under that name. All of this demonstrates Amanda's perspective: she's trying to impose UK/Commonwealth naming conventions on the USA, and that's as absurd as trying to get the properly named St Michael's Church, Pennington moved to a US format of St. Michael's Episcopal Church (Pennington, Cumbria). I've tried to remind her to drop the stick, but she won't give up and won't listen. Nyttend (talk) 05:33, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

What is the real conciseness criterion?

The definition of conciseness at the top of the policy page is "The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects." On the other hand, the WP:CONCISE section says: "The basic goal of conciseness is balancing brevity with sufficient information to identify the topic in a way the average person searching for it will recognize." While both talk about length, the first one is about distinguishing the topic from others while the second is about recognizing the topic. The second definition actually seems to subsume the recognizability criterion. Which of these definitions is correct since using both may lead to different article titles? —seav (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

One definition of the word "concise" is "giving a lot of information clearly and in a few words; brief but comprehensive." There are many variations but the theme is the same. Basically, "concise" is not the same as "as short as possible", but in discussions on Wikipedia, the two often seem to be used interchangeably -- incorrectly, in my view. Omnedon (talk) 14:36, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

That's one definition of the dictionary term "concise". But what I'm asking is when considering the conciseness criterion, do we favor distinguish-ness or recognizability? To give an (done-to-death) example, using the first definition, you can make the argument that the Washington city should be at Bothell since it's not longer than necessary to identify the article's subject (the city is named Bothell) and distinguish it from other subjects (there's no other notable topic named "Bothell"). On the other hand, you can use the second definition to argue that the city should be at Bothell, Washington since it makes it so that "the average person searching for it will recognize". —seav (talk) 15:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't agree that the first definition necessarily leads to "Bothell" as opposed to "Bothell, Washington". To me, the latter is necessary to identify the subject. The former does not identify the subject. However, it may be that these two sentences do need some re-alignment. In my view, a concise title is both short and descriptive. So then it's a matter of finding that balance point, which may vary from one subject area to another. Omnedon (talk) 15:22, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it is both, and they are related. Yes, conciseness would prefer Bothell over Bothell, Washington; but remember that conciseness does not exist in a vacuum. It is one of five balanced criteria, another one of which is consistency. Because the project has generally chosen to present lesser-known towns in the United States in the form of "City, State" (in part because so many U.S. city names are ambiguous), the addition of the state name is a reasonable deviation from conciseness. It's not like the title is Bothell, King and Snohomish Counties, State of Washington, United States, which would obviously be excessively long. Also, there are other places that have names that would be close enough to confuse with this name, if not for the additional information (Bothel, in Germany). bd2412 T 15:40, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with much of what you say here. The only part I would question is the assertion, often made, that conciseness would prefer Bothell over Bothell, Washington. I realize this is in dispute, but my own view is that it actually favors the latter, not the former. Since the various definitions of concise all, in one way or another, talk about both brevity and comprehensiveness, or saying much in few words, "Bothell" is not concise -- merely brief. It communicates next to nothing. Add a single extra element -- the state -- and then it becomes, to my mind, concise. Go further and then it is no longer concise. Brevity is at one end of a scale, let's say the left end. Conciseness is somewhat to the right of that -- but one can easily go too far to the right. Bothell is probably the shortest title one could have for that subject; but it's not concise, and that's the word used in the criterion. Omnedon (talk) 13:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Tweak to recognizability criterion

The recognizability criterion is currently described thusly: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize." I propose that we say "subject area will recognize" rather than "subject will recognize". When the subject of an article is obscure, very few people may be familiar with the specific subject of the article; but many may be familiar enough with the general subject area. Omnedon (talk) 15:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• I completely support this proposal. bd2412 T 15:41, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support Good suggestion. In effect this is already the criterion. For example a title like Physoderma leproides is accepted, even though almost nobody would be familiar with the subject (a type of fungus), because anyone familiar with the general field of biology will recognize that is is a species name. --MelanieN (talk) 16:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • In certain specialty fields like plants it's true that the taxonomy is such that people familiar with the area will recognize particular topics as being in that area from their names, even though they are not familiar with the particular subject. So what you provide here is a cherry-picked example of a title that would not be affected by this change. It's in the minority of all our titles, however. Perusing titles with SPECIAL:RANDOM suggests this proposal would indicate changes to the vast majority of our titles. --B2C 18:52, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • My question: recognized as what? Take note that the criterion says (removing the parenthetical phrase) is: "The title is a name or description of the subject that someone [...] will recognize." Does "will recognize" refer to the subject or the title? And how much recognition is needed? Does the Biology-familiar reader only have to recognize that the title refers to some sort of organism (in which case the current title is enough)? Or does he have to recognize it as a member of the Fungi kingdom, in which case, the current title may not be enough? (How can we tell if it's enough?) By leaving the criterion in its current state, we avoid such debatable questions for practically all articles. —seav (talk) 20:17, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support. A simple refinement that better conveys the intent (and normal use) of the criterion. ╠╣uw [talk] 16:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • No, it totally changes the intent and normal use of the criterion, and would result in indicating a change to the vast majority of our current titles. --B2C 18:48, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  A couple of additional points:

  The tweaked wording doesn't necessitate that any titles need to change — the recognizability criterion (like the other four) is simply a goal, not a rule. As always, the choice of how to weight and apply the criteria is up to editors, so there's no reason that established titles would need to change if the community doesn't feel it's warranted. Suggestions that most articles will somehow have to be retitled are unfounded, and seem rooted in the idea that titles are (or should be) determined by a rigid and mechanistic application of rules, rather than through consensus-building and community agreement on conventions.

  Also: WP:AT advises editors to keep the interests of a general audience in mind when choosing a title. To title an article such that it's recognizable only to the tiny sliver of the readership who are familiar with that one very particular instance of a thing does not IMHO meet that spirit terribly well; titling an article such that it's recognizable to those familiar with the subject area better meets it. ╠╣uw [talk] 20:43, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  Please don't misunderstand. I'm not saying the "tweak" will necessitate changes to any titles. I'm saying it puts into question the vast majority of our current titles that are now totally stable and for which there is no policy-based basis for changing them. Maybe that's what you want. But I, for one, seek to make our titles more stable, not less stable. And this little tweak would destabilize our titles like no other change to AT I've ever seen proposed, except for the effort to remove the "to someone familiar with" clause in recognizability a couple of years ago, which would have had the same destabilizing effect, as everyone at that time recognized, thankfully[3]. --B2C 21:08, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  Nothing stable has to change. Again, titles and titling conventions are set by the community, who weigh and consider all the criteria and relevant factors when determining what's most appropriate. If the community sees reasons why a certain title or convention is appropriate — reasons like naturalness, consistency, etc. — that's perfectly fine, and the proposed tweak does nothing to change that. (And if there are no other reasons for a title being where it is other than that it's recognizable only to a minute and very specialized sliver of the readership... well, then it may not be inappropriate to revisit that since it's contrary to the clear guidance that Wikipedia titles be chosen with a broad audience in mind... but again, it's up to the community.) ╠╣uw [talk] 16:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

  Of course nothing stable has to change. However, the bulk of our titles that are currently stable because of no allowance in the current criteria for another title will no longer be stable because with this "tweak" they will become reasonably challenge-able. Worse, if they change, they will remain unstable because they will be just as vulnerable to being moved back (and forth, ad finitum).

  It won't be up to "the community", as "the community" will now be ambiguous on the issue, so it will be up to the whims of those who happen to participate to decide what "the area" is, and whether the title is sufficiently recognizable to them, or whether it needs to be more recognizable or more concise, and there is nothing to prevent someone else from raising the issue again a month or year later, and for those who happen to participate then to reach a different decision. Multiply this by thousands of articles that are now at stable/unquestionable titles, and you should be able to appreciate the problem. --B2C 22:53, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

  No, the community who decides titles would be the same as it is today: involved editors. In what way would this adjustment change who gets to participate in debates on Wikipedia titles? How would it make titling no longer up to the community? I'm afraid your slippery-slope objections are becoming increasingly far-fetched and difficult to follow... ╠╣uw [talk] 13:27, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

• Maybe Support – I'd like to see some discussion of examples first of how this might change the consideration of some title alternatives; maybe based on some recent RM where recognizability's narrow expression has been used in support of a rather unrecognizable title. I agree that this needs to be fixed, but I'm unclear on whether this will do it. Dicklyon (talk) 16:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  I think the Bothell, Washington example in the section above is exactly the kind of thing the proposal is getting at. A person who is generally familiar with U.S. geography is still unlikely to have heard of Bothell, even though people who live in and around that city undoubtedly know it just by that name. Having the name at Bothell, Washington provides context for the person familiar with the subject area, but not necessarily the specific subject. bd2412 T 17:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  Similarly: A person generally familiar with Canadian geography is still unlikely to have heard of Kapuskasing, even though people who live in and around that city undoubtedly know it just by that name. Having the name at Kapuskasing, Ontario provides context for the person familiar with the subject area, but not necessarily the specific subject.

  However, the current location of that article is Kapuskasing. If this proposal is about getting at Bothell, Washington being the right answer, then it's also about having to move Kapuskasing to Kapuskasing, Ontario, and countless other examples like that. --B2C 20:42, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  Remember that the criterion is a goal, not a rule, and is only one of several. There's no reason any title or titling convention has to change if there are other reasons why it shouldn't, like consistency, naturalness, etc. The community decides, as always. ╠╣uw [talk] 21:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  I tried looking at some recent RMs and I first thing I saw is this: "Ponta Delgada (Azores)" to "Ponta Delgada". The proposed change to the criterion I think would not support this move. —seav (talk) 20:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Based on B2C's 5 random examples, which anyone would recognize at as a person name, a railroad, a company name, a composition title, and an unknown, it looks to me like the number of articles for which this would likely provoke a renaming discussion is not so big as to be scary. If it provokes a discussion as to whether "unnecessary disambiguation" would be good in a title like "Jalanan (film)", I think we can stand such a discussion; most likely we'll decide to leave it. But in cases where natural disambiguation is easily available, me might be more likely to choose it (like we did for V-2 rocket even though it's primarytopic for V-2). The reason I hesitate is that it's not clear the "subject area" is the fix that we'd need to get more support from recognizability in a case like V-2 rocket. I would argue that recognizability is a worthwhile property, even outside of those people already familiar with the subject area. As the TITLE nutshell said for 8 years: This page in a nutshell: Generally, article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature. I think it's a shame that recognizability got reduced to being nearly irrelevant, and ambiguity got to be perfectly acceptable, through the campaign of one editor in the pursuit of "naming stability". Dicklyon (talk) 22:02, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose. This opens Pandora's box. For example, it would support the argument that all films, should be suffixed with (film). After all, someone "familiar with the 'subject area' of films" who has not seen The Graduate is likely to not recognize The Graduate as a film, but surely would recognize The Graduate (film) as such. This change would subject title changes to myriads of articles. How many? Let's see, with SPECIAL:RANDOM.

1. Andy Whiteford, a Scottish footballer. Well, anyone familiar with Scottish football might not recognize him as a Scottish footballer, but they would recognize Andy Whiteford (Scottish footballer). Shall I go on?
2. Nepal Government Railway (NGR), Nepal's first railway. Not sure. Next...
3. Lark Technologies, a consumer electronics company founded in 2010. Better make that one more descriptive with something like Lark Technologies (consumer electronics company) so people familiar with (but not necessarily experts in) the area of consumer electronics will recognize it.
4. Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures. Surely an expert in the area of Soviet slapstick comedy films would recognize this film from its title alone, but someone merely familiar with the area might need some help. Per this proposal the title should be moved to Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (film) or even Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures (Soviet comedy film).
5. Jalanan. Another film! This time an Indonesian documentary. LOL! Who would know? Better move it!

Regardless, at least 4 out 5 titles randomly chosen should arguably be moved if this change is adopted. Do we really want to expose 80% of our articles to title changes? In any case, we really need broad exposure to this seemingly modest proposal with huge widespread potential effect before it is adopted. --B2C 18:45, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• Comment I see that (as usual) B2C intends to not just lay out his case, but also start individual arguments with each and every person who has commented. I'm not going to play that game; I've seen way too many of these discussions spin off into repetitious, unreadable TL;DR verbiage. My argument stands; B2C's slippery-slope argument stands; now let's let some other people chime in without fear of being challenged and swamped by repetitious argument. --MelanieN (talk) 19:00, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Your example gave me pause, and when I realized why it was a special cherry-picked case I thought it was important to point it out. Regardless, I would like to know if you disagree with my reasoning either there or where I laid out my Oppose case, and why. In particular, do you not think that this proposed policy change would support the arguments for title changes I gave in each of the five randomly chosen examples? --B2C 19:28, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

  MelanieN: Agreed: allowing other editors to venture their opinions – without being drowned out or shouted down – would certainly be welcome. ╠╣uw [talk] 19:51, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

• Sipport. I think B2C is entirely wrong in every one of the examples he gives. Not one of them would need to be moved based on this tweak. older ≠ wiser 19:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I completely agree. I think it is safe to say, for example, that people who are reasonably familiar with "film" as a field would be likely to know a critically acclaimed film like The Graduate. Of course, it begs the question, what is "the field" - for an Indonesian documentary, it would be Indonesian documentaries, or at least Indonesian films. bd2412 T 20:01, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • As Seav notes below, begging the question of what "the field" is, is in and of itself a problem introduced by this change. But point taken on The Graduate. How about Juliet of the Spirits, For Love of Ivy, 5th Ave Girl, or Above the Rim? --B2C 20:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
      • As I note in the section above, all of these things are factors to be weighed in determining the best title for a page. With respect to the films named above, recognizability to those familiar with "the field" would also be balanced against both conciseness (which would weigh against a disambiguator for a unique title) and common name. bd2412 T 21:12, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
        • We already have plenty of dispute caused by arguments that say "concise" does not favor shorter titles. This change will only enbolden that view, making more and more titles subject to the whims of those participating rather than consistently applied guidelines. There is also the argument that Common Name (description) is still using the common name - just in a form that makes the topic more recognizable from the title. Agree or not, these arguments become more valid and relevant with this tweak. --B2C 01:12, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
          • Conciseness favors the shorter title to convey the subject. If two titles are equally good at identifying the subject, then the shorter one is preferred. bd2412 T 19:08, 5 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose. I don't presume to know what the framers of the original recognizability criteria had in mind, but just making recognizability specific to the topic of the article itself leaves very little (debatable) room for interpretation which helps to stabilize article titles. If we relax the criterion to the "subject area", you invite debates regarding which subject area an article in under. Let's have 2014 AA as an example. This is an article about an asteroid that hit the earth on January 2, 2014. This title is completely unrecognizable to most people. If we modify the criterion to "subject area", what is the exact subject area? Is the subject area astronomy? Or the solar system? Or asteroids? But even someone familiar with astronomy or the solar system (he may know that Pluto is no longer a considered a planet) may not recognize that the article is about an asteroid which would require the title to be somewhere like 2014 AA (asteroid). Now let's say the chosen subject area is asteroids. We would still have debates on whether someone familiar with asteroids (he knows they're not planets and that the largest one used to be Ceres, until it was upgraded to a dwarf planet) would know this naming convention. Some people characterize B2C's argument as a slippery-slope, but his is a valid concern regarding the stability of article titles. —seav (talk) 19:58, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Indeed, Pandora's box has multiple lids. --B2C 20:14, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • You can get a feel for the framers' intent by reviewing User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#The early years, 2002–2008. And from there follow B2C's relentness years of working to marginalize the value of recognizability, to get to where the only acceptable title is the shortest possible title, so that editors are left without anything to discuss. Dicklyon (talk) 21:44, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
    • "... so that editors are left without anything to discuss." Maybe you like endless debates, but I think that reducing the amount of contentious discussions would be a good thing. It frees up time and effort to do other things to improve Wikipedia. —seav (talk) 00:51, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
      • That is a completely inadequate justification by itself. Simpler doesn't always mean better. Why not just change the article titles rule to be, "always title the article according to the first google result that isn't wikipedia"? Boom! No debates about article titles.... But that's not what we really want... AgnosticAphid talk 00:57, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
        • I agree that simpler (less discussions) is not necessarily better, but the corollary is that making it less simple (more discussions) is not necessarily better either, and I don't agree that this proposal is better. Your Google example is a strawman: Google results change and this would lead to titles being changed every now and then. Besides, the first result changes with whatever search string you use and deciding what search string to use will be another whole debate in itself, something that we would like to avoid if possible. —seav (talk) 01:06, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
          • To put things in perspective, I think it really helps to realize that the actual titles of WP articles could be random meaningless gibberish strings, with all possible names redirecting to those random titles as appropriate, and the encyclopedia would work almost as well as it does today. So all this hand-wringing about particular titles can only achieve a very marginal benefit at best.

            This may sound odd coming from someone who devotes so much time and energy to titles, but my motivation is moving us towards more title stabilization, so we all spend less time on titles, and any effort I put into arguing for this or that particular title for a given article is always ultimately driven by my recognizing that the process is a feedback loop - title choices are driven by guidelines which in turn reflect what title choices are made. For example, WP:OTHERSTUFF notwithstanding, exceptions (cough, WP:USPLACE) justify other exceptions (cough, WP:MOSPHIL) and thus increase title instability.

            Others seem to really enjoy the process of debating the merits of this or that title, and seem to favor relatively ambiguous guidelines that give them the flexibility to argue whatever happens to be their preference. Having all these title debates seems pointless at best, and ultimately disruptive. --B2C 01:48, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

• Support I think that the current recognizability criterion is so narrow as to be essentially meaningless. If you consider the idea of "recognizability" in the abstract, it doesn't really seem like making something recognizable to maybe 0.5% of readers actually promotes what would ordinarily be thought of as "recognizability." But that's what our current criterion does: it says, "make it recognizable to people who already know what it is, even if it's extremely obscure." Of course, if the rule were that the title is supposed to be recognizable to even people with no knowledge of the article's subject area, then it's true that we would end up with a lot of disambiguation that is unnecessary and unhelpful to most readers of the actual article. But that's not what this suggestion is. Yes, there would be some inevitable line drawing problems, and yes we would have to figure out some way of identifying the relevant "subject area," but in my estimation many wikipedia policies are like that. Plus, I don't think that it's much of an argument to say "leave it the way it is because it's easy to administer" when the "way it is" essentially reads the recognizability criteria out of existence. Wikipedia would be much easier to administer if there were no policies at all, but that doesn't mean it would be better. AgnosticAphid talk 21:37, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
  • Recognizability is perhaps a poor choice in name for this criterion. The idea at the time was to identify the underpinnings of WP:COMMONNAME. The whole idea was to use the name that people who are familiar with the topic use and recognize as that topic. It's not at all about making the topic recognizable to someone unfamiliar with the topic (though familiar with the ambiguous "topic area"). That was never a goal of titles, and it makes no sense to make it one now.

    Yes, other policies are ambiguous and provide confusing guidance, but WP:OTHERSTUFF is no excuse to make this policy more ambiguous and less helpful in terms of deciding titles. Weakening the criteria-based reasons to exclude certain titles does not help us decide which title to use, it just gives us more options subject to WP:JDLI opinions and ultimately the whims of whoever happens to be participating in any particular title decision.

    The ultimate goal we should be striving for is to have more situations in which no matter which handful of editors are involved, the same title decision would be made. We move in that direction by making our title selection criteria less vague and more precise, not the opposite, like this proposal would do. --B2C 22:05, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Did I miss something in my history? My impression was that recognizability was stable for many years before the "commonname" concept was brought in. I know you tried hard to replace recognizability by commonname, but I don't see what you could be referring to by "The idea at the time was to identify the underpinnings of WP:COMMONNAME" unless by "at the time" you mean the time when you were trying to stamp our recognizability as a criterion. Dicklyon (talk) 22:19, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, you missed something. The concept of common name goes back at least to 2002, originally limited to names of persons("Use common names of persons") [4]. The concept of recognizability was not explicitly mentioned then at all, in any fashion. The reasoning expressed there is pretty laughable by today's standards (e.g., "to maximize the likelihood of being listed in other search engines"). Anyway, the commonname concept was brought in before recognizability.

I don't remember who was primarily involved in bringing in the explicit listing of the criteria (including recognizability), but I suspect it was Kotniski and PBS. As I recall, based on talk page discussions, the reason to do that was to explain why we favored common names, etc. --B2C 01:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

No, you don't seem to have looked at the history. Dicklyon (talk) 06:07, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose because of the example given by MelanieN. The whole point of this is to use name for a generalist over a specialist. Someone who is familiar with a field is by definition a specialist. For example I got the in in joke "Hello world" sent by Space probe Rosetta. The problem with this suggested change is that it brings in a real problem of deciding what "area" means. -- PBS (talk) 22:10, 31 January 2014 (UTC)
• Support. If you're familiar with the subject area and that clues you in to an unrecognized title, that's close enough. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 01:23, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Entirely sensible. B2C's conflations end up entirely wrong. PBS's objection is worthy of consideration, to make sure the concern doesn't eventuate. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:28, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support. Not just because B2C opposes it, but because it makes sense. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:09, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
• Support—Arthur Rubin's sentiments are spot-on. Tony (talk) 06:22, 1 February 2014 (UTC) PS Could someone fix it? ""The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize." Perhaps: "The title is a name or description recognizable to someone who is familiar with the subject though not an expert."? Tony (talk) 06:29, 1 February 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose unless and until someone can convince me that the difference between "subject" and "subject area" can be clearly defined so that the revised wording is not the source of endless disputes as per B2C's examples. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

There have been frequent disputes about this criterion's application with the current wording. This suggested change might or might not decrease that. That is not the reason for suggesting this change. The intent is simply to bring the criterion better in line with actual practice, and with what I feel was always the intent of the criterion, as MelanieN has suggested. Many articles on Wikipedia are about obscure subjects. That's one of the great things about Wikipedia: we can have an article without the need to consider the relative size of the audience. As long as the subject is notable, it doesn't matter if 10 or 1,000 or 100,000 people are already familiar with it. The current wording requires familiarity with the subject, but the number of people familiar with some subjects may be very small indeed. Broadening the wording to say "subject area" makes recognizability much more likely to apply in such cases, yet does not negatively impact those subjects with which a great many people are familiar. Omnedon (talk) 13:32, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Ok, so give me some actual examples of when the revised wording would have the effect you claim, making clear the difference between the "subject" and the "subject area" in these specific cases. B2C has shown how the revised wording could be used in an unhelpful way. So provide clear examples of how it could be helpful. Be realistic about the ferocity of some disputes about article titles. Peter coxhead (talk) 13:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Actually, nothing B2C has said to this point has shown how the revised wording could be used in an unhelpful way. older ≠ wiser 14:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Peter, the problem is, what is considered helpful to one editor might be considered unhelpful by another. —seav (talk) 16:50, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

True, but that cuts both ways. A reader living in Springfield, Illinois might find it more helpful for the article on their city to be titled "Springfield", since it is the one with which they are most familiar, and there is no doubt that this would be the most recognizable title to a person from that city. However, it would cease to be the most recognizable title for the reader who has a general knowledge of U.S. geography, and knows that there are many places called Springfield. bd2412 T 19:08, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Omnedon (talk · contribs), the concerns about increasing disputes with this "tweak" is not about the intent but with the unanticipated consequences of the proposal. That said, I strongly disagree with your characterization of what was always the intent of the recognizability criterion. It was always meant to be limited to the scope of those who are familiar with the specific topic, and this specific point was unanimously supported in a poll that garnered much wider attention than this one has so far. The purpose of the recognizability criterion is to reflect in the title the name that is used by those who are familiar with the topic; not to make the topic recognizable from the title to others. Some editors favor expanding the scope of this criterion to allow for making topics recognizable from their titles to anyone and everyone, no matter how unfamiliar they are. The effect of this tweak would expand the scope in that direction. It introduces fodder for increased dispute in two separate ways:

1. By expanding the scope to those who are familiar with the "subject area", not necessarily the specific subject, it opens the field of possible titles to choose from. Any time we give editors more choices, we are giving them more to discuss, debate, and argue about. This is especially true for the countless articles where right now the current title is clearly the best choice consistent with the criteria, but where this tweak will put that into question. Worse, since we're giving them less guidance on what title to select, we're destabilizing countless titles. I've given a number of examples; here is another one: Malavoi. That's the name of a Martinican band. This is what people familiar with the band call it, and how they would recognize it. Currently, this is a very stable title. There is no argument based on WP:CRITERIA or anything else to change it. However, with this tweak, anyone will suddenly be able to put that into question. They might reasonably argue that someone familiar with the subject area of bands from Martinique might not be familiar this particular band, and so would recognize Malavoi. However, if we moved the article to Martinican band Malavoi, it would be recognizable to them (and, as a bonus, recognizable even to people not necessarily familiar with this subject area at all. So there would be debate, and there would be reasonable arguments on both sides, probably decided not for any good reason, but by the whims of whoever happens to be participating. So not matter what is "decide" it is subject to go the other way when it's brought up again a month or a year later. There are literally thousands and thousands of titles like this: stable today; but would be unstable with this tweak.
2. The whole question of what is the relevant "subject area" can now be grist for debate for every title. For Malavoi is it "Martinican bands"? Caribbean bands? French Antillean bands? World beat bands? Zouk? Who decides? How? On what basis?

The amount of consternation this tweak will cause is huge. The benefit it brings is nil. --B2C 21:15, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

• Ultimately, oppose. The article on "foobar" should be located where someone who is somewhat familiar with foobar would expect it. After reading the discussion, though, I think some of the fears of the other opposers are a little bit unfounded, assuming it's written down somewhere that throwing unnecessary disambiguation into article titles is a terrible idea. Is that written down anywhere? We need to write that down somewhere. Red Slash 01:05, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm not clear on how you imagine this change would get in the way of your desire that "The article on "foobar" should be located where someone who is somewhat familiar with foobar would expect it." Do you have an example in mind? Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The name Bigfoot is immediately recognizable to someone who knows who/what Bigfoot is. But if you're only familiar with the subject area and not familiar with the subject, would we need the title Alleged large ape-like creature roaming the mountains of the Pacific Northwest? Or even Pacific Northwest. Man, there are a lot of countries that have a northwestern region that borders the Pacific. If I'm familiar with the subject area of geography and unfamiliar with the actual Pacific Northwest... I don't know. I'm not absolutely hard-core opposing ... I'd like to see a more concrete explanation of what this would mean. Red Slash 05:54, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time envisioning an alternative title that someone familiar with the subject area would recognize for Bigfoot. Maybe Sasquatch? Probably not, but thanks for making me think about it. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't buy Bigfoot as an example. That is the sort of thing that is general knowledge. The average person who is not an expert in any field will know of Bigfoot. That average person may not have heard of the Cherufe or the Shug Monkey, but the average cryptozoologist of humanoid forms is far more likely to know these names. bd2412 T 15:19, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Well, people outside of the US might not be familiar with Bigfoot. And your examples are moot. Any cryptozoologist of humanoid forms who knows these names is familiar with (though not necessarily an expert on) these topics. --B2C 22:12, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Then the examples aren't "moot", they show that the titles are appropriate for recognition by someone who is familiar with the field. bd2412 T 22:17, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Assuming that there is agreement that "the field" in this case is "cryptozoology of humanoid forms". --B2C 23:01, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

• • You said, assuming it's written down somewhere that throwing unnecessary disambiguation into article titles is a terrible idea. It's written down as an essay: WP:UNDAB. There's controversy over including the meat of that essay into the WP:DAB policy page. So yes, the fears are not unfounded because people don't give an essay that much weight in debates. —seav (talk) 05:03, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Indeed that's B2C's recent rewrite of an old essay, incorporating exactly the problem we're talking about here to justify his strict interpretation of the concept of "unnecessary disambiguation". Obviously, concensus guidelines like WP:USPLACE are what he is trying to do away with, and obviously the community does not support that direction, and probably does not refer to the more recognizable names like Bothell, Washington as instances of "unnecessary disambiguation" or of something that's a terrible idea. Dicklyon (talk) 06:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

B2C may have recently reorganized it to read better, but the basic idea is still the same. And I happen to agree with that idea since about 6 years ago. —seav (talk) 08:06, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

It's OK that some agree with it, before or after his rewrite that coupled it to the recognizability issue, etc., but it never had wide community support. Dicklyon (talk) 14:00, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The concept underlying the WP:UNDAB essay has long had wide community support. WP:USPLACE is generally seen either as an exception per WP:IAR for good reason, or not an exception at all, based on the view that city, state is not a disambiguation, but is commonly used in reliable sources in the US as "the name" of the city. Perhaps this should be explained in the essay? --B2C 21:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

A good idea. But also it is probably worth mentioning the repercussions that altering the WP:USPLACE would have on many town names in the other English speaking countries where names are not usually disambiguated by the equivalent of "city, state" which impacts on "naturalness" for town names in those other areas. -- PBS (talk) 14:08, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Title disambiguation of popular songs

Input is solicited at this discussion which deals with article titles of popular songs. —Psychonaut (talk) 20:28, 4 February 2014 (UTC)