Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Lemonade out of lemons

I've been involved in some pretty ridiculous discussions, and I doubt anything will ever beat eight years of obstinate resisting to the obviously inevitable Yoghurt → Yogurt move, but the discussion (using that term loosely) that has been going on here for the last month (Since Dec 21) might deserve second place. It has been so absurd that I've been inspired to write an essay about the kind of tactics used here to blockade a rather straight-forward change that should not even have been controversial. If anyone wants to review it, I would appreciate it! Here it is:

• User:Born2cycle/Status quo stonewalling.

Thanks, B2C

Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus

I thought that since a number of editors who have normally shied away from WT:AT (Disfunction Junction) have recently joined in to voice their opinion, now is the time to strike while the iron is hot.

Since bad habits have developed that subvert the collegial atmosphere, I’ll establish some ground rules that everyone must abide by in order to participate in this poll. If someone objects to the rules for participating in this poll and chooses to not be bound by them, they are welcome to start their own poll.

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The question is simple:

1) Do you support This version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012‎ JCScaliger (talk | contribs)‎ (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)

…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:

• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (to someone familiar)”; or

2) Do you support This version of WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 00:01, 24 January 2012‎ Kwamikagami (talk | contribs)‎ (40,913 bytes) (Undid revision 472889901 by JCScaliger (talk) Get someone to resolve this rather than edit warring)

…which seems to be centered around this key bit of text:

• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (not necessarily familiar)”.

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The ground rules:

A) This is an up or down !vote; you are free to voice that you think the issue should be something else, but your vote may not further complicate matters by introducing a third (and fourth and fifth) option via such votes as • Comment This isn’t the real issue. The text we should *really* be discussing (because I like it a great deal) is…. If you participate here, it is to merely vote for one of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it.

B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Poll” section. You may blow it all on your !vote, or you may spread your words around to directly respond to other editors’ !votes in the polling section. Discussion and debate belongs in the following subsections.

C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything; “consensus”, as clearly and fairly established at WP:Consensus rules all. It means only that towards the end of this, I might motion that the poll be considered indeterminate, or that it ought to be snowballed, or to opine that an 80% quorum of those who have previously weighed in makes a consensus clear, or… whatever. But there will be no jumping the gun by the regular partisans.

D) If anyone who has previously weighed in with an opinion on this exact issue is contacted to let them know about this poll, everyone who has done so must be contacted; no cherry-picking, which in this case would be canvassing.

E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances, stonewalling, tendentiousness, wikilawyering, and all-around exhibiting a non-collegial interaction with others.

Greg L (talk) 19:37, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

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Poll:

FYI

 – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Closing of poll commences on or after 26 January at 19:19 (UTC)

• #1 (to someone familiar) It assumes readers have a flying clue what they are reading up on rather than pandering to the MTV crowd with the attention span of a lab rat on meth. It should be “Boutros Boutros-Ghali”, not “Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egyptian dude)”. Greg L (talk) 19:19, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) seems like the most sensible way forward as it clarifies that its not just for experts, but for a reasonable person - seems a good balance. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 19:39, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) Start clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM repeatedly and you will quickly find articles titled with names that are recognizable only to those familiar with the topic. Almost all exceptions -- where the title has more precision in it that makes the title possibly recognizable to those not familiar with the topic -- are to address ambiguity with other uses of that name on Wikipedia.

  We already support exceptions in specific areas with specific naming guidelines like WP:NC:CITY, and occasional special-case exceptions with WP:IAR, but to endorse regularly adding additional precision to titles of articles because their names are not recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, or because they might appear to be ambiguous with uses outside of WP, opens an enormous quagmire that would make deciding titles even more contentious than it already is.

  With #2, in cases where we agree on common name and primary topic and the title is therefore straightforward, there could still be contention on the issues of whether additional precision is needed to be make the title more recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and, if so, what exactly that additional precision should be. To what end? It's simply not worth it. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:51, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

• #1 (to someone familiar) Others have said it better than I could. Dohn joe (talk) 20:00, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) - while I'm not sure I agree with all the changes on that page, if we're just going with the above choices, the title should be as accurate as we can make it. Is the argument is here the difference between "The White Album" and "The Beatles"? If so, does including the "to someone familiar" wording help or hinder that decision?--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 20:03, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) #2 is obviously going to be used to make all sort of disambiguations in articles that didn't really need them. For example, the proposer of #2 moved Public achievement to Public achievement (US civic scheme), when there wasn't any article with a similar name.[1] --Enric Naval (talk) 20:36, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) Policies should describe best practice. The moves mentioned above are unusual (so most editors don't agree with them) and not helpful to the reader. If we are going to disambiguate Boutros-Ghali, why stop at (Egyptian)? The same argument would add (Secretary-General) and Hague Academy of International Law. (The complaint that began this was that categories may be unclear; there is a work-around for anybody to whom this is a burning issue.) JCScaliger (talk) 22:32, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) providing that the caveat "(though not necessarily expert in)" is included otherwise we will tip too far the other way and invite the use of obscure jargon and acronyms as names over more generally recognised names. For example articles written for peer reviewed journals often use obscure jargon and acronyms as names because the target audience will be familiar with them. One only has to read this talk page to see how communities/groups develop their own jargon which I think is likely to be impenetrable to the lay reader on first reading this page. -- PBS (talk) 00:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) For many specialised topics, no title would be recognizable to a layman, short of copying the entire lede. However, that layman might well type in a technical term he read elsewhere but doesn't understand, hoping to find the article at that title. As well as recognizability, WP:AT advocates naturalness ("what the subject is actually called in English"), precision ("only as precise as necessary to identify the topic"), conciseness ("is it overly long?") and consistency. #1 is the better fit with those other aims. Certes (talk) 01:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) I haven't followed this discussion specifically, but as a principle it is generally agreed by most editors. --Kleinzach 01:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) per all those above. Jenks24 (talk) 03:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) as I have already indicated support previously. older ≠ wiser 12:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1. As I understand it, #2 would say we should use Matagami (town in Quebec) instead of Matagami, because someone might otherwise think that Matagami is a Japanese name . Because of that, I vote for #1. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) This wording settles the question of whether we create clumsy pedantic titles or streamlined ones. Binksternet (talk) 15:32, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) For the reasons amply outlined above and in the archives. I think we have a couple of people who need to learn WP:How to lose with a little bit of dignity and grace, or at least when to give up on an obviously hopeless cause. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) This seems closest to the principle of keeping titles as simple as possible, rather than recapitulating the article lede in the title. Franamax (talk) 22:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (to someone familiar) For the reasons stated above and because Wikipedia is primarily a general encyclopaedia, rather than a specialist publication. MistyMorn (talk) 12:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Motion on moving forward from here

The result was that there is overwhelming community consensus in support of this version of the WP:AT, which bears this edit summary: 23:56, 23 January 2012‎ JCScaliger (talk | contribs)‎ (40,869 bytes) (Resatore text to Dec 21, before Noetica's continual revert war for a non-consensus text. Boldness requires novel texts and discussion.)

A reading of the comments reveals a very like-minded community reasoning as regards keeping article titles streamlined with minimal parenthetical or comma-separated disambiguation. The details of the basic principle should no‑doubt be expanded upon and illustrated with example proscribed and prescribed titles. Editors who have been active in these debates over the last month now understand—for the most part, anyway—the core issue, but new editors coming to WP:AT for guidance when creating a new article could benefit with some “show me” examples of what the verbiage means.

Editors active in this area should be mindful to study the reasoning given by the various respondents to this poll and endeavor to work collaboratively towards the spirit of the common view.

How to move forward from here?

I motion as follows:

1. That the contents of Wikipedia:Article titles be changed to the version desired by the community;
2. That the shepherding administrator strongly consider keeping WP:AT locked for an indeterminate period of time—until it is clear that an atmosphere of collaborative consensus-building is consistently exhibited on this talk page.

Those who would like to second the motion may do so here. Greg L (talk) 20:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

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I'm not seconding as I disagree with #2. I think part of the problem here is premature page locking by administrators who are not looking at what the disputes are really about, which exacerbates the problem. As this poll clearly shows, there is broad and deep consensus support for the edit I made back on Dec 21. An examination by an uninvolved admin of my original edit and the discussion at #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost should have lead to having that edit put in place instead of a page lock, and that would have ended all this nonsense weeks ago.

A similar situation now exists regarding what should be even less controversial at WP:COMMONNAME (see #Clarifying ambiguity). I don't want admins locking pages; I want them to recognize disruptive status quo stonewalling for what it is, and act accordingly.

Take out #2, or, better yet, replace it with a request that admins do what I just asked, and I'll second. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:44, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• As for your demand that #Clarification_of_recognizability_lost be simultaneously addressed with the subject of this poll, there’s a problem with that: it wasn’t an issue that was addressed by this poll. In your anxiousness to get everything you want now, you undermine yourself.

  Note that in #2, I asked the administrator to “strongly consider”; I rather suspect the administrator has mostly made up his or her mind whichever way to go already. Hissy fits about other editors’ behavior are unlikely to impress an administrator that a collegial collaborative writing environment is at hand. You might best take your huge *win* and not agitate so vigorously. Your current demands are rather like the prisoner in his jail cell strumming his drinking cup along the bars of his cell at midnight, shouting “Unlock the door! I won’t get into fights if butt-heads aren’t mean to me!” : it’s not a convincing message in its totality.

  If I were you, I’d intently read “Some advise to B2C,” below. Greg L (talk) 22:05, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• I second both #1 and #2 unconditionally. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Comment: In light of Dicklyon's comment below, I have to say that I agree with him about #1, but my unconditional seconding reflects my opinion that both formulations are equally bad, and that locked-down stability of the entire page reflecting the status quo ante bellum would be the most desirable result. Milkunderwood (talk) 04:58, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

The "page reflecting the status quo ante bellum" suggests the version without the "people familiar with the topic" clause, that is, back to the version that came in with a discussion in May 2011 – as opposed to the version that B2C inserted, that had never before been supported in any discussion, that he put in to try to win an argument. That's why I object; not that one is worse than the other, but because one shouldn't be allow to bully one's way around that way. A proper discussion can't happen until he backs off from this offensive offensive. Dicklyon (talk) 05:14, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, you're right - what I meant was, back to whatever it used to read ante the May 2011 bellum, when people started messing with it to suit their own tastes. But in either case, #1 is (to use your term) orthogonal to me, as long as #2 can be implemented. Milkunderwood (talk) 05:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to take your comments seriously if you talk about the May discussion and change that way. Have you even looked at it? Dicklyon (talk) 07:00, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

No I have not. I wasn't even aware of this discussion until 25 January. My point is rather that, regardless of any specific phrasing on a policy or guideline page, no one should take it upon himself to jump in and make changes to the page without first having 1) posting a notice of intent on the talkpage, 2) making sure that the notice is brought to the attention of probable interested parties of whatever view including those probably in opposition, and 3) having a meaningful discussion about the proposed changes. Any and all changes made to a policy or guideline page without first having gone through this procedure should be considered void and illegal.

If I have the wrong date for when such changes - and reverts - first started, I apologize. This is a very difficult discussion to read and follow. I should say that you are one of the few editors here - there are a few others - with whom I've nearly always agreed. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:07, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I will say, though, that from the viewpoint of one who has been frustrated trying to search for articles, a consideration of Article titles in isolation from what information is given at the beginning of the lede is unhelpful and pretty meaningless for actual real-life searches, either at Google or here in Wikipedia's own searchbox. I also agree that Kleinzach's point concerning "common names" is integral to this whole problem, even though it may appear to some as being extraneous. Milkunderwood (talk) 21:33, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Flattery will get you everywhere. I believe the history is simple and not much in dispute, until after the December kerfuffel started. The phrase in question was originally inserted a year or so ago (I don't have the link handy) by Kotniski, with no trace of discussion on the talk page; nobody reacted. Then this discussion happened in May 2011. It was criticized with the comment And skip all this nitpicking ("readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in"... although not complete ignoramuses; while keeping in mind some of them may be ignorant but they hold the are not.....)). Then per the proposal and discussion there, the phrase was taken out; no repercussions; then we had a stable version based on discussion for 6 months or so. Then in early December, before discussion, Born2cycle put it back in while in an argument that recognizability had been cited in; and he started a discussion, but ... the rest is more in dispute. Dicklyon (talk) 23:29, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

In that case my own preference and recommendation would be to restore the page to its last incarnation made collegially, regardless of what it said at that point, lock it down, and proceed from there. That's what I had meant. Milkunderwood (talk) 23:55, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Why would you ignore the consensus of the community in preferring the wording that happened to be in place before May rather than the wording in place since May, as reflected in a very recent unanimous result? --Born2cycle (talk) 00:22, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

I support #2, but I don't agree with #1, because this poll's limited polarizing viewpoint has not yet allowed us to have the discussion to find the version best supported by the community. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

How can a poll not allow you or anyone else from having a discussion about anything you want? --Born2cycle (talk) 02:10, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

• Yes. Looking over the poll comments, no one expressed concern that anything was polarizing, and no one expressed disappointment at the month-long process of gridlock amounted to insufficient time to discuss things. Moreover, you, Dick, ought to have voiced your views as early as possible in the poll if you wanted to have any influence; others might have considered your view and modified their comment or even changed their vote. In short, the community consensus is not in alignment with your wishes. Consensus is not 100 percent of editors in agreement and clearly isn’t so in this case either. Greg L (talk) 03:34, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

I think I did express my concerns pretty well below. They were orthogonal to your poll and vote. It's like asking to vote, or influence the votes of others, in the Republican primary; irrelevant to my concerns. Dicklyon (talk) 03:42, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

How familiar?

I can't support this yet, because I have no idea how it should be interpreted. Can someone tell me what familiarity is in relation to Latin Quarter? Tony (talk) 03:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I would say familiarity in relation to Latin Quarter is that you know it refers to a section of a city (as opposed to being, for example, a type of coin)... you do not need to know that it actually can refer to sections of many cities, however, as you will discover this when you search the term. Blueboar (talk) 04:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

To one familiar with the Latin Quarter of Copenhagen, Latin Quarter might be enough, I suppose. Dicklyon (talk) 04:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

It would appear that this is the crux of the problem. If familiarity is not defined, then we could have endless edit wars over the appropriate level of familiarity. Take large cell tumour, for example. In introductory medical texts, they hyphenate. For the general public, it would be best to hyphenate as well. Otherwise, it sounds like it's a large tomour. (Which would you rather have, a large cell tumor or a small cell tumor ?) However, the phrase is almost always left unhyphenated in medical journals. I don't think dab'ing would cover this, because large tumor is not a topic. I can see the AT wording proposed here being used to insist that the unhyphenated form be used, because that's what those "familiar" with the topic use, despite the inevitable confusion that will cause among those whose only familiarity with the disease is that a friend or loved one has it. — kwami (talk) 04:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

To me that's a good example of where the narrowing that B2C wants is harmful. If we leave the familiarity maximally undefined by leaving it out, some editors are claiming that we mean recognizable to "everyone" or something like that. It seems to me rather that recognizability is just a generally good thing, to more people being better than to fewer, without any "cutoff" at "familiar". We're not trying to define an algorithm here (well, B2C is, but that's his trip). Rather, we are stating some of the values to consider. Conciseness matters, too. So does consistency. And precision. And naturalness. None of them trump the others, and none of them are reduced to zero, unless you have a clause like B2C injected to reduce familiarity to zero value in the particular argument that he was in when he inserted it (I've forgotten what that was, but it hardly matters). If we let B2C add a new clause to reduce a consideration to zero whenever someone cites it against him, we'll soon get to his ideal well-defined naming algorithm, I suppose. Is that the direction we want to go? Or can we follow the suggestions of several editors to rethink how we talk about recognizability, precision, conciseness, etc., with respect to what we'd like to accomplish, instead of this knee-jerk reaction followed by version polarization? Probably it's too late... if we're to have a serious discussion, we need to put the wikilawyering behind us, start fresh, swear off threats to take people to AN/I and RFC/U, try to get Noetica to re-engage in this talk page, and actually discuss before we vote. Dicklyon (talk) 04:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Like other examples presented here, that confusion can be solved by simply reading the first line of the article. For example Giant cell tumor of bone. --Enric Naval (talk) 12:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Wording#1 was in place a year with no issues with interpreting familiar or anything else before inadvertently removed in 5/11. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:54, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing particularly wrong with the wording that Kotniski made up and inserted without notice or discussion; I don't believe he had any bad motives. And when Ohm's Law removed it, inadvertantly or otherwise, he did at least have a few people in a discussion talking about it with him and seeing what he was up to, and there was no objection. Neither version is particularly better than the other. The problem is what happened in December, when the recognizability provision was quoted in an argument with you, and you immediately marched in and changed it in an attempt to reduce its weight to zero in that argument. That's not OK. No number of editors saying that Kotniski's version is better can make up for the fact that you are inserting it in an attempt to win an argument by changing the rules. In this sense you would be attempting to set a precedent where none existed before, giving it meaning that nobody foresaw, in an attempt to get your way in a whole series of potential disputes that really hinge on a question that deserves discussion. But until you back off and swear to stop hauling people up on charges for resisting your outrageous behavior, this discussion can't happen. Noetica is boycotting this page because of you. Only you can make an attempt to fix that. Dicklyon (talk) 05:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

What??? Diffs please. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you might have missed the subtle way he put it when he last edited this page almost a month ago. I have been more explicit in telling you that I'm waiting for you to back off. Dicklyon (talk) 05:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Here is Noetica's last comment, although "Diffs please" probably means Born2cycle disagrees with the previous post more completely, not just the part about Noetica's most recent departure. I read Noetica's last comment as implying, though not explicitly stating, that Noetica is taking a break because of Born2cycle. Art LaPella (talk) 06:00, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Art, perhaps so. I had assumed that he recalled how he started this on 20 December. Tony had done this talk page edit saying "Erik, as I said at the top, 'I'm not so concerned about the caps as the impenetrability of the vaguer title'. The policy says: 'In discussions about page titles, consensus has generally formed around answers to the following questions: [1] Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?'". About 40 minutes later, Born2cycle did this policy page edit in which be changed the provision that Tony had just quoted, saying in his edit summary "Restore original meaning/wording which was, apparently inadvertently, removed in May 2011". Then he wrote a big talk page section about it, which you can still see at #Clarification of recognizability lost, in the wee minutes of 21 Dec. (UCT). The rest is what it is. He won't back off. Dicklyon (talk) 06:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

ps. I was not on Tony's side in that particular titling question. I fixed Life Safety Code (in this diff) to instead clarify its topic, so the problem would go away. I just didn't think Born2cycle should be allowed to decide when to give zero weight to a titling consideration, based on an old piece of text that had never had one good thing said about it. Since then, lots of people say they like it, but few of them are aware of the history or implications, and might be willing to reconsider if they knew they were handing over a win to such a cheat. Dicklyon (talk) 06:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

This issue was previously addressed and follow-up questions were ignored by you[2]. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:33, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I see you observed there that Tony had previously been OK with the "familiarity" wording. That should make it even more clear that the issue here is not the wording. It's your rewriting of policy in the middle of a dispute in a way that would attempt to establish precedent for reading it as supporting your interpretation. That's why it needed discussion, not an argument over which of two nearly equivalent versions. Letting a cheater win is never a good precedent. Dicklyon (talk) 06:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I wasn't rewriting anything. I was restoring what I thought it already said because it had said it before, was clearly supported by practice and consensus (as the poll results above confirms again) and history indicated it had been removed inadvertently. I wasn't "cheating". This is more ridiculous than I thought. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• (e.c.) Dick, indeed, the gap between editors here may in part be based on the desire of some to produce a catch-all simplified algorithm for article titles. I suggest that the rules need to express more detail and that while most individual decisions will be unproblematic, those that are contested need to balance a number of issues. It's the 10% of problematics that will take most of the explanation of the policy and most of the time required in decision-making. Again, how familiar? is a problem. We should discuss some examples either side of a putative boundary and come to a deeper understanding of how to advise editors on this familiarity criterion, rather than trying to bury it as a factor. Tony (talk) 06:40, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I have no strong opinion on the wording, but I totally endorse your call to explore it in open discussion. I still don't think we can even start on that until B2C tells us he is willing to back off. That means giving up any territory that he claims to have won in his cheat, swearing off his wikilawyering against us, retracting his recent threats, etc. Dicklyon (talk) 06:46, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Territory? Winning territory? If that's your paradigm that explains much. There are no owners on WP, no territories that belong to some more than others. There is only consensus. I suggest you start thinking in those terms. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:22, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Guys I suggest you agree to disagree, this discussion doesn't seem very useful. The above consensus is getting towards WP:SNOW. Additionally Dicklyon that is getting worryingly WP:BATTLEGROUND like... -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 07:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

If we go down the rabbit hole of what is "familiar" then why not down the rabbit hole of "recognizable" as well? Familiar means "Of things: Known from constant association; pertaining to every-day knowledge, well-known" (OED familiar,(6)), coupling that to "though not necessarily expert in", and using the reasonable person test that we have to use for all these words unless we are going to chase the white rabbit through the dictionary, then I think it is self explanatory. It is not as if this is something new conjured up by Kotniski Dicklyon, as it was around in a slightly different wording before s/he started editing the page: see a version from 17 July 2009. So I suggest that it is not a question of B2C backing off, currently the consensus is to have the sentence that includes "familiar". I think that the sentence which has now has gained a consensus in all the polls we have held since mid December should be put in place sooner rather than later. Once in place, if Tony1 can come up with a more suitable word than "familiar", then I will support using it but lets go with the consensus version and then discuss changing it, rather than sticking with a version that does not have currently have a consensus. -- PBS (talk) 10:23, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Let this be your final battleground

Can we please drop the metaphors of fighting for territory and of covert action; Dicklyon's edit above seems to be the first use of one of these, but "subvert/subversion" have been used three times now, and are beginning to creep into the common discussion. We are not conducting a war; if Dicklyon and Noetica are, they should seriously consider a unilateral suspension of hostilities. We are all supposed to be on the side of a better and clearer encyclopedia; that's policy.

• territory
• subversion by Noetica
• subversion by Dicklyon.

These three allies are the only people I know who use this vocabulary regularly. I do not care for such a subculture. Please stop.

FYI

 – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

I do not know that Born2Cycle "cheated"; if he did, this is not the venue to discuss it - any more than it is the venue to discuss Noetica's career of exact reversions. This is not about power; really it isn't. It's about the encyclopedia. I do know that I disagree with the bloviated titles that were the protocatarctical cause of this poll; I do know that I support the language of familiarity (although, once this discussion is over, I would still support making it into a separate section). Many do likewise. JCScaliger (talk) 20:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Hear, hear! I would add that requests/demands that someone else "back off" are also indicative of battleground mentality. Good time to review WP:BATTLEGROUND. Good advice there. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. Thank you to Eraserhead1 for pointing out WP:BATTLEGROUND, which I was not familiar with, but which does describe the situation. I used the territory metaphor to try to get B2C to understand how he comes across, but I'm sure it was a waste of bytes. Dicklyon (talk) 01:11, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for admitting to your WP:BATTLEGROUND mentality, which explains much. I'm sorry I come across like that to you, but that's not how I see it at all, and explains why I've been so baffled by your behavior. Yes, BATTLEGROUND mentality explains your reverting my edit because it was me who made the change, not because the change isn't a good one. Please stop doing that. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:48, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

From the reader's perspective

Editors, could I seek advice on these two google searches, in which not even the displayed opening of the lead under the hit-title helps to define the topic. These are just from an idle, random search:

• Queen Street West
• Sherbrook Street.

Tony (talk) 08:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Click on the WP link at the top of the google results and read the lead - that will tell you what it is. If you're looking for either topic you're presumably familiar with them (or why would you be looking for them) and you will have found them. What's the problem? --Born2cycle (talk) 08:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You keep undercutting Tony's arguments with common sense. I don't think that is allowed here. older ≠ wiser 12:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

He's not undercutting my comments. This is from the reader's point of view, not you'rs and not B2C's. I've yet to meet a google searcher among the public who knows what you're talking about. Tony (talk) 13:02, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

And I'm not sure what your point is. You seem to expect a title to contain within itself enough of a description that an unwitting passer-by would know what the subject is. But that is not the purpose of a title. Never has been, never will be. older ≠ wiser 13:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

We assume, perforce, that readers expect something like our notability policy; if they type in Fifth Avenue, they will not be surprised to find themselves reading about Manhattan (and an large majority of readers will be inconvenienced by a dab page, because they intend Manhattan); at least as synecdoche, it is known everywhere in the world. I certainly do; revising that assumption would require a much larger discussion than this one.

That being the case, it is a question of fact whether there is another notable Queen Street West in the world (presumably there are far less notable ones, as there are other Fifth Avenues - although not perhaps as many). If the answer to the question is Yes, somebody will eventually write the other article, and we will disambiguate; if the answer is No, we have no problem.

FYI

 – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

One trusts that this random search which has produced two Canadian streets is not intended to suggest that Toronto or Montreal are less important than New York City. JCScaliger (talk) 19:19, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

"I've yet to meet a google searcher among the public who knows what you're talking about". What I'm talking about is clicking on a link and reading the lead of the article. Google searchers don't need to even hear that, much less know what that means - they just do it. Again, what is the problem? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:07, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

You can't have it both ways. Enric Naval says, above, "Like other examples presented here, that confusion can be solved by simply reading the first line of the article." This argument is of no use to the reader who googles either of these items, for example, and is presented with nothing clearer by the opening that is included in the google entry. Should readers know that they need to click further at google to find out which Sherbrook Street it is? Or are they expected to fully download the article page to see whether they've wasted their time? Tony (talk) 09:13, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

The title of an article alone is not going to be enough, in general, to completely determine what the article is about. But I think that the vast majority of people who use Google know that they can click on the link in Google to see the entire article. There's nothing wrong with loading an article to see whether it is the one you want. It's like using an index in a book: the index itself does not say whether the page listed actually contains the information you want, it just says where to look. — Carl (CBM · talk) 10:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a lot wrong with having to click and wait to load. If the disambig isn't in the title, it needs to be in the lede. Many users are burdened with slow loading, even if you aren't. Milkunderwood (talk) 11:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Right, Tony's criticism is more appropriately directed at poorly constructed leads rather than article titles. older ≠ wiser 12:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that we need to descend on WP:LEAD and instruct editors to write their leads in such a way that will compensate for the vague, misleading titles we dish up to google search pages? Tony (talk) 13:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with most titles. If you want to take the issue up at WP:LEAD and leave WP:Article titles in peace, I think widespread spontaneous celebrations might erupt. :) older ≠ wiser 13:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

And more unhelpful disambiguation. Kwami (the admin who protected the page), moving Swati (tribe) to Swati (Pasthun tribe), but there is only one Swati tribe, then moving all other Pasthun tribe articles for "consistency" (I have a few of them in my watchlist. Or moving Hashmi Syed (Nakokara) to Hashmi Syed (Nakokara) clan, where there are no other articles with that name, and when both Hashmi Syed and Nakokara are red links. Sigh.... --Enric Naval (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Ugh, he has moved dozens of tribe articles in the same way[3]. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:12, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Early exchange between editors

The following is an early exchange between editors before others added sub-sections to the poll. I’ve transplanted the thread to here in hopes that both editors will approve since it frees up some of their 300-word quota. Either editor is free to move this back up to the polling section. Greg L (talk) 12:53, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment – the question was never about which version; as B2C observed many times, nobody was particularly defending the other version. The problem was about process, and now Greg has given his stamp of approval to B2C's process, so we'll probably still have no chance to discuss the issues that made B2C feel that he needed to narrow the scope of the recognizability provision this way. If anyone wants to talk about it, I'm open. If not, I give up. Dicklyon (talk) 01:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
  • For my reasons, see comments here.

    Well? Talk already! What are you waiting for? --Born2cycle (talk) 02:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

    • I was waiting for you to back off. Like waiting for Godot. Dicklyon (talk) 02:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
      • Lame excuse. WPTALK pages are full-duplex. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

This stuff is funny enough to be on Saturday Night Live

If a title is recognizable to someone familar with a subject then it must be unrecognizable to someone who is unfamilar with the subject. So given the fact that we have 3.9M articles and (who really knows) an average reader might be familar with 5000 subjects, then from that readers perspective, we have slightly less than 3.9M unrecognizable titles. This word recognizability to which we are assigning responsibility to millions of readers who we purport, speculate, conjecture, guess (or whatever other completely unsupportable with empirical evidence) verb we can use are going to react to any given title is the height of absurdity. You all can't even explain it to yourselves and yet you think 1000s of editors will immediately understand what you mean. Whatever wording follows this non-word recognizability will be meaningless in the larger WP community and be the source of endless, non-productive debate. It would be incredibly simpler if we just assigned a simple responsibility to the title itself: A WP title should faithfully represent the content of the article. When I was working in Europe in the 1980s, I would ask Germans that I met and worked with the following question: Have you ever seen the United States?, a great many would answer Yes, we have, my wife and I have been to Miami several times. They were no more familar with the U.S. than an illiterate worker in the Far East. We have got to stop trying to deduce how millions of readers are going to react to a title, and put the responsibility on the actual title itself--Title vs Content, title vs ambiguity, title vs MOS, etc. Funny stuff above. Off the grid for a while in the real-world of readers who must be familar with something. I'll ask a few if they've ever seen an unrecognizable WP title- you know those big bold, black letters at the top of every article. They are hard to recognize sometimes when I just wake up and haven't had that first cup of coffee. --Mike Cline (talk) 10:56, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you keep saying that recognizability is a non-word. From Webster's 1913: The quality or condition of being recognizable. And Merriam-Webster lists it as a noun form of the verb. Granted it may not be a very commonly used word outside of WP, but the meaning is not nearly as confusing as you try to make it out to be. older ≠ wiser 12:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

OK, mea culpa, it is a word, albeit obscure in most people's vocabulary as you point out. Still its the wrong word, the wrong assignment of responsibility to millions of readers and given the above discussion, I think your statement but the meaning is not nearly as confusing as you try to make it out to be. is a bit niave. If a dozen experienced editors can't agree on what it really means, its the wrong word when the expectation that 1000s of editors will understand it. --Mike Cline (talk) 00:45, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, if we adopted #2 , we would need a renaming to United States (North-American country).... --Enric Naval (talk) 12:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand... ... please explain why would we need to rename if we went with #2? Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

"United States" is ambiguous... see United States (disambiguation). "United States" alone is arguably not recognizable as referring to the North-American country to those more familiar with it referring to the other uses listed there - adding the additional disambiguation makes it recognizable for everyone. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:04, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I understand the argument that the title "United States" could be considered ambiguous, but I still don't understand the logic behind saying that such ambiguity would require us to use the specific title "United States (North-American country)". There are other (far better) options that would resolve any ambiguity. The most obvious would be to use United States of America. That is not ambiguous at all. Blueboar (talk) 22:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anyone meant that the specific title "United States (North-American country)" would be required by wording 2, just that some disambiguation of "United States" title would be required. And having to choose how to disambiguate a title that requires no disambiguation under the current system (and wording 1) is another disadvantage of wording 2 (assuming the rest of policy/guidelines were consistent with it rather than with wording 1 which they currently are). --Born2cycle (talk) 22:26, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

ah... my understanding was that Enric was saying the specific title would be required. ok... but couldn't "United States" be considered ambiguous no matter which version is chosen... if so, I still don't understand why people feel that choosing v1 would mean that we sould keep "United States" as the title but choosing v2 would force us to change it? How does "familiarity" change whether something is ambiguous or not?

Enric and B2C, you do your case no good with the ridiculous strawman United States. It is very recognizable to people all over, and not very ambiguous. Nobody would be so extreme as to read anything proposed as suggesting that it needs a disambiguator. Dicklyon (talk) 01:18, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

If a title is recognizable to someone familar with a subject then it must be unrecognizable to someone who is unfamilar with the subject.

As stated, this is a logical fallacy.

To give a counterexample, many physicians are highly familiar with certain diseases, but completely lost when you give an outdated name for them. You should expect your cardiologist to be highly familiar with vasovagal episodes, but you should not expect him (or her) to recognize the title Gowers' syndrome from a century ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Or to go the other way... As a historian, I am familiar with and recognize the term "Scrofula"... I am not familiar with and would not recognize Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis (the only reason why I can put it here is that I just looked it up). Now, as far as choosing a title on this particular topic goes, we have one potential title that is recognizable by a historian, and another that is recognizable to a modern medical doctor. "Familiarity" isn't going to help us choose between them, because each potential title is recognizable someone who is familiar with the topic... but which potential title we are familiar with depends on our academic discipline. Blueboar (talk) 23:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Amen brother! If one were to look at Blueboar's example 'holisticaly one might conclude that either title--Scrofula and Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis as article title both Faithfully represented the contents of the article. However when one applies the criteria WP titles should reflect common usage in English language reliable sources, one might (I didn't actually determine this) find that Scrofula was the most common usage. However looking at this holisticaly, when applying the criteria WP titles should be unambiguous and there is another article about a fungus called Scrofula, we might disambiguate to Scrofula (disease) and Scrofula (fungus). In this hypothetical there are no MOS or naming convention concerns, but if there were they could be dealt with simply. I fail to grasp why such a relatively simple decision about an article title cannot be conveyed in simple policy statements. As one of my Fortune 100 clients always likes to say--Keep it simple stupid-Don't try and boil the ocean --Mike Cline (talk) 01:02, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm told that there are two kinds of people: those who can tolerate and deal with ambiguity and uncertainly (usually progressive/liberal types, by the way), and those who can't (we call them Republicans, to put it in current political terms and risk pissing off half of you all). As a progressive, I am not bothered that recognizability doesn't give us much help in choosing between the two names for the disease in question. It's still OK to have recognizability as a goal, and it will often provide helpful input to the naming decision. Same for the "to whom" question: why try to pin that down? It will never to possible for all naming decisions to be made by policy alone, unless B2C gets his way, which would be sad indeed. Dicklyon (talk) 01:25, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

And I thought the IRA considered themselves progressive, or where you referring to a different type of Republican if so why no disambiguation :-) -- PBS (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh… do behave, Dick. You were doing fine until that last sentence. If you want to engage in “Well… I think *you’re* the poopy‑head” with B2C, take it to your or his talk page, please. Greg L (talk) 01:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Dicklyon, I will freely admit that I have no clue as to what you said above, but that's irrelevant. I do however have a question. Can you provide an example of an article title decision that was not based the our article title policy at the time the decision was made? I want to determine on what basis the decision was made, if it was not made on the (at the time) WP titling policy. It might prove instructive, because we may be missing something that should actually be in the policy that isn't. Please do that for me. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 01:36, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

I hope I'm wrong, but I predict this question can be added to the long list of questions on this page posed to those favoring recognizability to the unfamiliar in our titles (for lack of a better description) that remain unanswered (no, I haven't compiled it in one place, but will do so if challenged). My theory for why questions like this remained unanswered on this page by these guys is explained here. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:38, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar, I agree with you that the choice between scrofula and TCL wouldn't be decided on the basis of recognizability, because both names are recognizable to people familiar with the subject. Tuberculous adenitis and King's evil are also "recognizable" options for that disease.

But just because a single criterion doesn't determine the title all by itself in every single case doesn't mean that it's not a useful criterion, and it's certainly not a good reason to require that the title communicate the contents of a page to people who know nothing about the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

• This stuff was on Saturday night live for three Saturdays in a row! while the audience rustled their candy-packets NewbyG ( talk) 16:35, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Elaboration and examples can be added later

Note that before 11 May 2011, (∆ edit, here), the key passage used to read as follows:

* Recognizability – an ideal title will confirm, to readers who are familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic, that the article is indeed about that topic. One important aspect of this is the use of names most frequently used by English-language reliable sources to refer to the subject.

Elaboration like this may certainly be added later. Furthermore, we are free (and I welcome doing so) to add examples (or more examples) of prescribed and proscribed example titles into later, explanatory sections of WP:AT—like It is United States, not United States (North-American country).

However, now is not the time to work on such details. The purpose of the above poll is to establish what the community consensus is on the core issue and move on from there. Things are moving along splendidly; the community clearly welcomes the opportunity to put this one to bed and do so without fuss.

Along with the basic principle in bold that each poll response begins with, is the accompanying reasoning and views of that editor. Many of us tend to admire our own reasoning expressed in our poll responses, but we must respect and understand the reasoning of all the others in the poll in order that clarification, elaboration, and prescribed/proscribed examples can later be added. Greg L (talk) 13:14, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

No, we will never work this out without examples. Tony (talk) 13:17, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Why do you say that? A consensus seems to be forming without the examples in place now. As I wrote, the community seems to welcome the opportunity to establish the core principle. And by reading the reasoning of all these editors who are participating in poll—some of whom have avoided WT:AT altogether because of its tenor—we are better prepared to add examples and further revise WP:AT, which will always be in a state of revision. Greg L (talk) 13:21, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

One small problem is that no one can say how this "core principle" will be interpreted. Minefield for friction and uncertainly out there, I'd say. I hope you're will to take responsibility for dealing with that outcome, rather than thinking through the policy in terms of real examples.

I note also that no one has taken seriously my examples of cryptic, vague Google title entries that require readers, somehow, to know where to click to find out exactly what street, in this case, the topic is. If people can't see that that is highly unsatisfactory, we may as well give up and go home. Tony (talk) 13:41, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps because that question was answered, in my opinion. From the reader's point of view, why would he Google "Queen Street West"? Perhaps he lives there and wants to read more about it. Perhaps he is researching widening the street. Perhaps he is a real estate developer, and he wants to know if houses on that street are in an upper- or lower-class neighborhood. Perhaps he has seen it in an address, and wonders if it's north Toronto or south Toronto. But if he doesn't know it's in Toronto, then he is unlikely to know it exists at all, and he won't Google it. It's nice to confirm that it's in the right city, but everything can't be first. In this case, the first fact is that "Queen Street West" can be the name of a neighborhood as well as the street. Being in Toronto is second. Art LaPella (talk) 16:42, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Tony, maybe I'll go back and count how many times you've raised this same issue with these types of examples, each time it has been addressed, and questions have been posed to you about it, which you've ignored. You keep raising this issue as if there is a problem so obvious it doesn't need explaining. But there is no such problem. Editor after editor looks at these examples and reacts with, "So? What's your point?".

So, if there is a problem, then you're the only one who sees it, and you're going to have to explain it in a way that the rest of us can understand. Or, as Denzel put it (at 4:40-4:50), "Explain this to me like I'm a 2-year-old because there's an element to this thing that I just can't get through my thick head." And if you can't explain it to us like we're 2-year-olds, well, that's telling too. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

• An example I like to use (which has the disadvantage that it would require changing an existing article title) is it ought to be “Collins Street“ and not “Collins Street (a premier street in Melbourne, Australia and not one of the many non-notable streets by the same name just because they return a hit on Google Map)”, as our current “Collins Street” link currently behaves. A Google search on "Collins Street" shows there is but one that is encyclopedically notable. This example embraces the principle in “#1 (to someone familiar)”, which is further fleshed out in the above-mentioned elaboration of that principle: One important aspect of this is the use of names most frequently used by English-language reliable sources to refer to the subject.

  But, as I first wrote at the start of this thread, we can add examples later. The community seems to be happy as a clam with getting the basic principle established after a month of gridlock. And we can actually read the !vote comments here to better understand the community’s thoughts before endeavoring to elaborate on the basic principle and to add example titles. Greg L (talk) 20:51, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

  • One little nit - the community's support for getting this principle established was quite clear within the first hours of my making the initial edit on Dec 21, including explanatory commentary similar to what we're seeing here, as was noted at #Consensus clearly supports Version 1 over Version 2 on Dec 23. But there's nothing wrong with confirmation. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Appropriateness of new classical music naming criteria?

In the same spirit that this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the appropriateness of WP:MUSICSERIES on the music naming conventions page. Thank you, MistyMorn (talk) 00:08, 30 January 2012 (UTC) Original wording of request was: In the same spirit that this question about the 'Common names policy' was publicized, I would like to request informed opinions on the appropriateness or otherwise of WP:MUSICSERIES? I feel that this new classical music titling guideline, which strongly prioritizes 'consistency and (more arguably) 'precision', was pushed through on the basis of local consensus without allowing time and space for consensus in the broader Wikipedia community. I have raised my concerns on the music naming conventions page, and really would be more than happy to withdraw from the fray if the discussion there is expanded to take in a wider range of informed 'consumer' feedback. Thank you

I don't know how "informed" I am, but I'm very definitely a "consumer" of information concerning classical music. I'm not a musician; I'm simply trying to catalog a large collection of recordings, and I keep looking here in Wikipedia for assistance. I have often been frustrated in trying to find articles, and without doubt, the way WP:MUSICSERIES is presently written greatly simplifies my work. Milkunderwood (talk) 01:50, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

There was a good consensus for WP:MUSICSERIES. It was based on WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. I understand that MistyMorn, a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, believes that if a group of interested editors work on a guideline, it will necessarily be biased in some way because of their prior interest in the subject. This may well be an theoretically valid point of view, but Wikipedia could hardly function without interested people taking part. --Kleinzach 02:11, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. MistyMorn has made an identical posting here. --Kleinzach 02:25, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, Kleinzach. My posting was made in good faith.I followed advice to post at "WT:MOS or WT:AT or another appropriate 'core' guideline talk page" (having explained my reluctance to make the step myself, given that I am relatively unfamiliar with WP practices). WT:AT is clearly pertinent and I felt there was a rationale for eliciting at WP:MOS as well. Since the discussion on the music naming convention page is hard to navigate, I summarized some of the concerns that had led me to request further input. I now realise this was inappropriate and have revised the wording of the request accordingly. I'm not sure what can be done now about the dual posting. MistyMorn (talk) 09:48, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I also feel the need to rebut Kleinzach's claim that MistyMorn, a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias, believes that if a group of interested editors work on a guideline, it will necessarily be biased in some way because of their prior interest in the subject. This may well be an theoretically valid point of view, but Wikipedia could hardly function without interested people taking part. I think my point was clear: While guideline input from experts is essential, it needs to be complemented by input from non-experts who are also interested parties, ie 'stakeholders' (since it's not the just the writers who are interested in an article.) MistyMorn (talk) 10:28, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

We've already explained to you that many contributors at WP:CM are non-experts. I'm not a musician myself. Why do you insist on referring to everyone at WP:CM as experts? --Kleinzach 03:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

You two obviously have a disagreement to work out, but I want to state for the record that notifying relevant places like AT and MOS about discussions that are likely to interest the regulars there and whose input is probably more well-informed than average on Wikipedia article policies and guidelines, is not canvassing, unless it exhorts a position ("come stop this!" or "rally to the defense!"). It's absolutely normal Wikipedia procedure. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 11:35, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:NCM had sections on common names and on disambiguated names all along. Don't these two sections cover everything? This new section throws away our usual naming criteria of common name, naturalness, and recognizability and substitutes an indexing system. As far as organizing CDs goes, we could create a "Classical Music by Number" article or category. This article can be used as a model. Kauffner (talk) 05:06, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

• Is this still about Moonlight Sonata? if so, by some other well-established method should cover it, making that a possible way of titling the article. (Moonlight Sonata is tolerably well-established.) If the section is being quoted against that, then you have a conduct problem, not a policy problem. JCScaliger (talk) 17:36, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, typing “Moonlight Sonata” into the search field and being taken to Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) is a satisfactory balance of the test criteria I consider germane to determining proper titles, which are as follows:

1. Does the article title look studious and encyclopedic?
2. Is it factually correct the way most well-educated readers understand the subject matter?
3. After a redirect from popular street vernacular, does the actual title best adhere to the principle of least astonishment?
4. Do the spelling, diacritics, or capitalization conform to conventional, high-quality, real-world English-language practices as exercised by the most-reliable English-language RSs?

I’m not seeing a problem with Piano Sonata No. 14 (Beethoven) since it is a redirect from a common name wherein the redirect is encyclopedic, adheres to standard music convention, and in this particular instance, astonishes no one. Greg L (talk) 17:02, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

P.S. JCScaliger’s Is this still about Moonlight Sonata? is a valid and crucial question that highlights a chronic problem around here. Whether or not this particular case is about “Moonlight Sonata”, it is still true that far too often, editors talk in the wholesome-sounding abstract and no one can figure out what they’re driving at and what their real objective is. We all end up talking cross‑purpose, completely waste our time, and outsiders who aren’t up to speed on the minute-by-minute blow-by-blow between disputants have no flying idea what the real nugget of the issue is about. This being evasive and abstruse deprives us of greater community input and makes it nearly impossible to discern a consensus. Man up and explain what you’re really trying to accomplish with some specific examples, please. Greg L (talk) 17:16, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Take it easy there. In this case, having followed the minute-by-minute blow-by-blow, I can confirm that MistyMorn does actually seem to be questioning WP:MUSICSERIES—or at least the way it was worded at the time—and how it relates to COMMONNAME, just as he said in his original post here, and not the Moonlight Sonata issue in particular. MM was even neutral in that RM. With that said, I agree that examples are almost always helpful. Moonlight Sonata is a good one here, there are others we could use, for example Eine Kleine Nachtmusik which was subsequently added to the wording at NCM. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 22:30, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I am taking it easy, you ol’ calm voice of reason. ;-) I stated my preference and then, in the post script, I stated that we need more examples being used here so we don’t have outsiders guessing at what people are driving at. As to one of your examples, is there a consensus that “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” (a German-language name in an English-language encyclopedia) is preferable to “Serenade No. 13 for strings in G major, K. 525 (Mozart)”? Or even “A Little Serenade”? Greg L (talk) 23:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I fully agree that when establishing a set of guidelines, it's important to take the time to consider examples and possible issues arising. I've invited comment on a series of examples that I think are broadly similar to Eine Kleine to help explore how the recent changes to WP:MUSICSERIES function in slightly different contexts. The named Vaughan Williams symphonies may be relatively uncontroversial. Apart from one possible exception, they don't really touch on the controversy regarding cases—of which Moonlight is just one—where the common name is also a nickname. MistyMorn (talk) 13:09, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

And I would like to stay out of the atomic-level details of guidelines governing the selection of titles for music articles. One thing I have become acutely aware of is that the Internet emboldens everyone (wikipedians are no exception) to express that they have an opinion even if they knew nothing whatsoever about a particular subject matter five minutes earlier. The greater one’s self esteem, the more individuals tend to prolifically pound their keyboards without fully understanding the subject matter.

Whether the specialty is psychology, mathematics, programming, linnaean hierarchy, dog breeding, fish species, or music; I believe it is best for us generalists to sit back and let the specialists figure out the details for their particular specialty. Towards that end, I think it is best if we have input from a wide segment of the community so we can establish the fundamental principles at WP:AT governing the vast majority of titles. But then WP:AT needs to butt out and let the specialists have Wikipedia follow the way the real English-speaking world practices the art within any particular discipline.

The notion is bankrupt that any single set of style guidelines can bring harmony across all the English-speaking world’s disciplines (achieve cross-project consistency). Improperly pursuing that end does our readership a great disservice. The proper role of any encyclopedia is to educate its readership on a given topic and properly prepare them for their continuing studies elsewhere on that topic. We fail our readership if we send them down the road talking and writing “weird” (in unconventional ways) in front of a gathering of experts in that discipline. I can just see it: “Why do you write it and say it that way??” some expert asks. “Because I read it on Wikipedia,” comes the response. (*knowing smiles*)

It can not be clearer that arguments that amount to “Wikipedia is a single published entity that needs a single set of rules governing all matters of style across all disciplines” is tantamount to “Let’s have readers submit college papers and walk into meetings all fat, dumb, and happy but completely at odds with the way the experts in a particular field practice their art.” Wikipedia reflects real-world practices and must not try to change the way the real world works—even if that shocks the conscience of wikipedias who really really like the metric system or have a great disdain for uppercase letters, or… whatever detail a particular wikipedian has a jones over. Just because these well-meaning editors desire to change how the way the real world works, think Wikipedia ought to be exploited as an agent of change in hopes our weirdness will gain traction, and know how to navigate their way to this page and dig in their heels when they don’t get their way, is no reason the entire system here has to break down just because some editors can’t accept “no”’ for an answer. Greg L (talk) 15:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you making a general comment, or is all this directed at my brief pointer? Fyi, I do have some professional experience of working on guidelines, and I didn't like what I saw here. I've also loved music all my life. Thank you in advance for the understanding, MistyMorn (talk) 16:00, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry; mine was a general comment and wasn’t in the least a criticism of your conduct and endeavors on Wikipedia. Wikipedia needs experts like you rather than your average young generalist (their numbers are great). Wikipedia has had its instances where a local consensus was at odds with a community consensus on a larger scale, but I had (and have ) no reason to think you have had a hand in any such things by way of music titles. If you have suggestions where the general principles on WP:AT are at conflict with what the music pros think is best in that discipline, please advise. Greg L (talk) 17:22, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. I'm glad the comment wasn't aimed at my gf contributions, however inexpert. Although I agree the recent changes to WP:MUSICSERIES are a step in the right direction, it seems to me that this local guideline is still at odds with WP:AT if common names that are universally understood in the 'real world' like Moonlight, Waldstein, Hammerklavier, Kreutzer, Eroica, Pastoral etc etc are effectively banned from titles on 'scholarly' grounds (and by saying that I'm not supporting The Moonlight Sonata as a title). IMO, MUSICSERIES still seems to aspire to be a classification system (however simplified) rather than a titling guideline. Unlike some of the main proponents of MUSICSERIES, I think that WP:COMMONNAME is an excellent criterion across Wikipedia, classical music included. But since commonname usage appears extremely controversial locally, I was trying to take a few small steps to explore some of the less heated aspects in a bit more detail. This move was partially in response to your own demand to focus on specific examples rather than abstract theorizing (and why I posted the last pointer here). Regards, MistyMorn (talk) 18:20, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I duknow when it comes to music. I personally think common names have a place for the article titles of some songs when that name is near-universally used by music aficionados in conversation. My litmus test would be that if a conductor at an orchestra was talking to an orchestra member and told him of a particular song he wanted to play next, that is the name that would be a best fit. If it is the “Pastoral” (one of my very favorite compositions), then I think that is perfectly encyclopedic. But I would also have no problem with “Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)” so long as Pastoral (song) redirects properly, which it doesn’t because it takes me to “Head (The Jesus Lizard album), which makes no sense given how weak the association is. Greg L (talk) 03:10, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

You are thinking of "Pastoral Symphony" (not song)—which does redirect correctly to "Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)". GFHandel ♬  03:33, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether Greg deliberately spoke of "article titles of some songs" - (oh, please, no; not this same straitjacketing of classical together with popular music) - but in fact this is a valid point. Someone who wouldn't have a concept of "classical" music if it bit him on the leg picks up a reference to "Pastoral" somewhere, knowing nothing other than it is "music". But within Wikipedia, the system works. If I type nothing but pastoral into the searchbox, it returns a list of 10 suggestions, none having to do with music. Then as soon as I type a space and an s, it suggests, in sequence, Pastoral Symphony (which will take me to Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven), then Pastoral state, Pastoral staff, Pastoral (song), Pastoral Symphony (disambiguation), Pastoral sonata, Pastoral support, and Pastoral Symphony (Vaughn Williams). With appropriate redirects, anyone ought to be able to find anything in Wikipedia. There's no reason why a redirect couldn't be added to the Jesus Lizard page, if this is thought to be a problem.

In the meantime, I've never yet seen a better or more lucid explanation of the general article title problem than Greg's post of 15:52, 4 February 2012, above, and I very much hope he will crank it up into a full-blown essay so that it doesn't disappear into an archive of this page. It has long seemed to me that the real problem is that WP naming policy is a procrustean bed for specialties like classical music, or for instance ornithology, where a field of study has developed guidelines that best suit their specific needs, and then here at Wikipedia they get pushed and pulled to fit into schemes that are not just foreign to them, but in their experience simply don't work as well. But then I also have my own bête noir concerning encyclopedic tone as Kotniski tried to describe it. I truly believe that if we are attempting to be authoritative we should also try to sound authoritative, and not "dumb down" to the lowest common denominator of readers. Redirects do all the work, and the wording at the start of an article's lede assures immediate easy access to any and every wanted article. More properly formal article titles are noticed by most users, and do serve a valuable purpose in at least offering to a reader a concept of how the topic fits into a more general scheme, rather than reinforcing his/her limited view of the article in isolation. Milkunderwood (talk) 06:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

By the way, while I don’t know diddly about music notation, I do know my Beethoven Symphony No. 6. For decades, my favorite part has been the 1st Movement- Allegro Ma Non Troppo and I am especially fond of the part roughly 1:22 from the end of the movement; I think it is pure genius.

FYI, I also tried Pastoral (symphony) and Pastoral symphony, since the parenthetical form for adding specificity is an exceedingly common wiki-convention. But that didn’t work either. Having it be “Pastoral Symphony” seemed a bit out of the blue (no parenthesis). It’s easy to add more redirects.

The issue I think we are arguing about here is what is the best primary title to use for this song. And towards that end, my main message point is that WP:Article titles would best convey the fundamental principles covering article titles and should let the specialists in any field apply those principles as they see fit. I propose fundamental principles:

Editors active in specialty subjects on Wikipedia, when choosing an article title, the following basic principles should apply (in my opinion):

1. The article title should seem netural, studious, and encyclopedic.
2. The title should be a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
3. It should be factually correct the way most well educated readers who have an interest in the field understand the subject matter.
4. After a redirect from a common name, the actual title should best adhere to the principle of least astonishment.
5. Where experts and aficionados who are active in the field usually refer to the subject by a common name—both in writing and verbally, the common name is often best.
6. The spelling, diacritics, or capitalization conform to conventional, high-quality, real-world English-language practices as exercised by the most-reliable English-language RSs.

The music specialists (and the physics specialists and the computer programming experts, etc.) would simply take these general principles and apply them as they see fit in their specialty. Greg L (talk) 19:42, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify that my specific question regarding "Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)", the one commonly known as the 'Pastoral', has absolutely nothing to do with redirects (relevant though such questions are), 'songs' (a complete misnomer here), or specialist musicological details. It is just one possible test case among many about whether these local guidelines are in keeping with Wikipedia policy. As I wrote elsewhere: "It seems to me needlessly unfriendly to the broad Wikipedia readership to omit the common name (Moonlight, Waldstein, Appassionata, New World, Pastoral, Pathetique, etc, etc) altogether from the title (as distinct from redirects). I am asking whether WP:MUSICSERIES is in keeping with Wikipedia naming policy. I felt the guideline was 'pushed through' based mainly on local consensus (some proponents seem to feel strongly that that was actually a good thing). In brief, is WP:MUSICSERIES a valid local guideline, or is it a fudge?" IMO, that unanswered question is relevant to readers of this centralized policy page. MistyMorn (talk) 20:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Duknow. It’s hard to get sufficient generalists to march from here into a specialty venue where, once one sets foot, the natives tend to circle the wagons and can vastly outnumber those whose Wiki‑theology ain’t “straight” and smite all who trespass. If you don’t believe me, just try getting something sensible accomplished at “Lesbian” ^(disclaimer), “Race and intelligence”, or any of our terrorism-related articles. It took me three entire months of consensus building and infighting just to get Wikipedia to stop routinely using retarded terminology unused in the real world like The Dell Inspiron came with 256 mebibytes of RAM and start using the terminology the rest of the computing planet used. Sometimes it’s better to just walk away and let ‘em play in their corner of the playground and not presume to dictate to them what the real rules of Four square are like. Greg L (talk) 22:04, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Maybe the criteria about accepting a project naming proposal could be as simple as, does it help the general readers? If not then reject, if it does, then we can use it. Vegaswikian (talk) 22:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Isn't preferring a name used in reliable sources that's "familiar to our readers" a key rationale for WP:COMMONNAME? MistyMorn (talk) 23:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

This is precisely why Kleinzach has been trying for a long time to point out the deficiencies of WP:COMMONNAME. Most of this discussion here is simply wikilawyering. Again, I heartily endorse Greg's new posts and specifically his well-thought-out six enumerated basic principles. Milkunderwood (talk) 23:29, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME is current policy (and one which seems to enjoy widespread community consensus, pace Kleinzach). Pointing out an issue of level of consensus is not wikilawyering. MistyMorn (talk) 12:00, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Judging by the frequent references to WP:COMMONNAME, it certainly is a popular policy, but it is also a major source of disagreement because of its (unstructured) vagueness. I am sure no professional publishing house would include anything like it in its manual of style. While I have my own view on the issue of article titles, I think that any clarification of the policy (pro or anti my personal position) would be better than the present amateurish and divisive version. --Kleinzach 02:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

And I'm arguing that the WP:MUSICSERIES local guidelines deserve improvement. That's no criticism of the original authors: it's normal for guidelines to be discussed and improved. I think that improvement process already began with the Eine kleine Nachtmusik changes and can usefully continue. That's why I've opened another test case with Beethoven's Pastoral. MistyMorn (talk) 22:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Oh, gosh - this the fourth parallel discussion of this topic that I've now found so far. See

• Talk:Symphony No. 6 (Beethoven)#Retitling proposal/s to accommodate the common name 'Pastoral'
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Classical music#Yet More Beethoven Nickname Page Move Discussions, and
• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#But what about WP:COMMONNAME?

Are there more I haven't found yet? Milkunderwood (talk) 22:44, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

The main discussion about Beethoven's Pastoral as a test case to try to improve WP:MUSICSERIES is:

• Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (music)#But what about WP:COMMONNAME?

Please discuss that specific question there. Thank you. MistyMorn (talk) 23:09, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Poll to plan for future discussion on Recognizability

Our previous discussions (starting with Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#Clarification of recognizability lost) and polls (Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 34#RFC on Recognizability guideline wording, WT:AT#Recognizability wording Poll/RFC, and WT:AT#Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus) left us with insufficient information about what people really intend with respect to the venerable recognizability provision in TITLE. Now that things have quieted down, I'd like to try this alternative framing, so that the people who supported the "familar with" wording, and others, can clarify whether they intended by that to support what Born2cycle and Kotniski seem to be trying to change the recognizability provision into; or not. I expect some will support option 1 here, and some will not, which will give us more information.

Some history of the evolution of recognizability can be found at User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?; feel free to follow up and find more history if it matters to you.

---

The choices:

These texts are intended to be suggestive of intent for what recognizability should mean, not proposals for final wording.

1) Something like this bit of text, intended to explicitly represent what I think Kotniski and Born2cycle were trying to get at in restricting recognizability to people familiar with the topic:

• Recognizability – A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources; recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title.

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#1 (Post-Modern)”; or

2) Something like this bit of text, copied from this May 2008 version of the policy, and approximately representing what was stable since 2002, representing the alternative idea that we do try to make titles recognizable to a large number of people, as a top-level consideration that must be balanced with other considerations such as conciseness:

• Recognizability – Article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity.

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#2 (Vintage)”.

3) Prefer a compromise somewhere in between these two texts; supporters of this option support the idea of discussion to find wording for a good middle road, not particularly close to either of the two extremes proposed above. Feel free to use your 300 words to elaborate. If there's an intermediate old version that you particularly like, this would be a good place to quote it or link it.

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#3 (Compromise)”.

4) None of the above, or something completely different, such as not having a recognizability provision. Please use some of your 300 words to elaborate.

…which, for the purposes of this poll will be called “#4 (Something different)”.

---

The ground rules:

A) It's a poll, not a vote. It's informational, not binding on anything. Leave positive support comments only please; you are free to support up to two options (subject to the same total comment length limit), and to voice other concerns without limit in the discussion section below the poll, but your comments may not further complicate matters by introducing additional options into the poll structure once it starts. If one of your votes is a "second choice", label it as such. If you participate here, it is to support one or two of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it. If you feel you really must support three of the options, get over it (if you register support for 3 or all 4 items, I'll remove one or all and let you know).

B) You may have a total of 300 words, excluding your autosignature, in the “Recognizability poll” section, on your own statements only. Responses to the statements of others will be removed. Discussion and debate belongs in the following discussion subsection.

C) I will moderate the closure. That doesn’t mean I will “decide” anything. I intend to keep it open long enough, to collect enough information, that others can use it to get a sense of what the feelings are here. Everyone should feel free to cite and interpret poll results.

D) Please feel free to canvass for outside opinions, but if you do so then mention in the discussion section who you have invited, so we can have an idea how wide the invitation list is.

E) I may add new ground rules within the common sense framework of trying to accomplish a poll without disruption to adapt to new circumstances.

My thanks to Greg L for his poll framework, rules, etc., which I have cobbled here. Dicklyon (talk) 00:13, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

---

Recognizability poll

Please leave these stubs here. Copy one or two and add your positive comments and signature.

• #1 (Post-Modern) – ...
• #2 (Vintage) – ...
• #3 (Compromise) – ...
• #4 (Something else) – ...

(see the section above for descriptions of the numbered choices)

---

• #2 (Vintage) – I like the 2002–2008 recognizability provision best, as it reflects a lofty goal based on readers, rather than someone's interpretation of how to get there; that's why I made it a choice, anchoring one end of the spectrum. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #3 (Compromise) – 2nd choice; I think there's a range of possible interpretations of recognizability that we can consider in an attempt to converge on a good consensus; an open discussion that acknowledges the history and current concerns will be productive. Dicklyon (talk) 00:16, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #1 (Post-Modern) (see below) – As annoyed as I am with all the endless and strenuous wikilawyering all over this page, there's no doubt in my mind that titles should reflect best practices, and not be dumbed down for those who are unfamiliar with the topic. Redirects and disambiguations do all the work of guiding the unfamiliar to a wanted article. It has been argued that readers never look at article titles, and I do not believe that. Some readers may not; but for those who do, a properly formal title as established by editors familiar with the field helps to put the article into a broader context. My objections posted above have been concerned with editors taking it upon themselves to edit the policy or guideline itself when the topic was under discussion. (Edit): Or making changes without prior discussion. Milkunderwood (talk) 01:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• Leaning towards #2. I think I understand the intent behind the first version... but I am concerned that the "... familiar with the topic" language could be misinterpreted to mean we should ignore WP:COMMONNAME in favor of "Official names". I am certainly open to #3 or #4, but would need to see specific language first. Blueboar (talk) 03:51, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Something else) – Abandon Naturalness and Recognizability in favor of what they really mean—Common Name. As policy statements, these suck. They provide no useful guidance for title decisions. They may be useful for explaining why we use Common Name, but don’t contribute to the title decision process. In RMs, whenever someone chooses to argue Naturalness or Recognizability as a policy basis for a title decision, the only way they can defend it (and do defend it) is with Common Name—what is the common usage in English language RS. If that is the case, why don’t we just say the policy is Common Name? The current language seems like this scenario: A new resident moves into the neighborhood and asks: “What’s the speed limit on this street”, his neighbor replies: "The speed limit is a moderate rate of forward motion designed based on the local road conditions, the demands of a residential neighborhood and acceptable to both residents and authorities.” The new guy asks: “so how do I know what the speed limit is?” “Oh! That’s easy, look at the sign, its 25mph.” Common Name isn’t as black and white as 25 mph, but Naturalness and Recognizability are vague and useless as policy statements. I would replace them with the following language:

  • WP article titles should faithfully reflect the contents of the article

    WP article titles should reflect common usage (or the common name) of the subject based on reliable English language sources.

  Once we accept Common Name, policy statements about Ambiguity, Neutrality, Conciseness, and Style would fall right in place. Everyone argues that titles are determined by consensus and there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. I agree, but I don’t agree that consensus somehow is easier because we’ve littered this policy with a bunch of useless and conflicting [Babel].--Mike Cline (talk) 10:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

• I'll take a bowl of #2 (Vintage), with a #3 (Compromise) topping, please: Version #1 (Post-Modern) is clearly yet another attempt by special interests to force geeky specialist practices and preferences on everyone. This missing of the general-audience encyclopedia forest for the specialist jargon trees problem is increasingly common on Wikipedia, and in one case has caused seven years and counting of rampant editwarring and disruption. There is a reason that the concept "albinism" is at the article Albinism, not science/medicine jargon terms like Achromatosis. That said, unless there is a clearly strong preference in generalist literature for one term (Heroin) while the specialist literature uses something impenetrable or unrecognizeable (Diacetylmorphine), there isn't any reason not to use what the specialist literature uses, especially if there is anything vague, ambiguous, misleading, obsolete, debunked or otherwise incorrect about the common usage. It is true, and important to the issue, that redirects work and work well. If the heroin article were moved to the diacetylmorphine name, no one (unless perhaps on a heavy dose of that substance) would be confused or freaked out. But #1 is unacceptable; it's another way of pushing the "specialist sources are more reliable about their specialty in every possible way, including style matters" nonsense. No one believes this but the specialists; clearly, generalist reliable sources are more reliable about style, regardless of topic, for a general publication. General, not specialist, style has to win out in a general encyclopedia for a general audience when the two conflict, pretty much by definition. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 19:20, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #3 (Compromise). A possible concept would be "recognizable to someone who is looking for the article" (not people familar with the subject of the article, but people familiar with the topic in which the subject is contained). #2 is much better than #1, and no one brought this up in the WP:COMMONNAME discussion, so it would be disruptive not to consider it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:38, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

* #4 (Other) That is, the text unanimously supported by the last poll, Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? The wording may be improvable (say a section of its own, mentioning reliable sources expressly), but this is about the idea.

• • Number 1 is another algorithmic approach, not a goal, and many people disagree with the algorithm; nobody supports this wording, not even the two editors blamed for it. #2 is untestable, does not consider reliable sources, and tends to lend support to the unsound argument: "there are more Indians/Americans/whatever than other kinds of English-speaking people, so we have to do it their way." This is presumably why it was changed. #3 is a compromise between two undesirable options. JCScaliger (talk) 21:59, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #3 (Compromise) first choice. I like Arthur Rubin's suggestion that a title be "recognizable to someone who is looking for the article". We should not be surprised if many titles are not recognizable to random passers-by in the street who are unfamiliar with the subject. older ≠ wiser 22:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other) Second choice. I also very much agree with JCScaliger's comment above. The phrasing unanimously endorsed in the poll above is considerably better than version #1. #2 is just too vague and nearly impossible to assess. older ≠ wiser 22:15, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other) per Kotniski and as resuscitated by JCScaliger; my objections were procedural. Commentary in my previous vote for #1 still stands. Milkunderwood (talk) 22:25, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other) Support the wording as agreed in the last poll that only closed on the 26th of last month: #Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus (so the opinion of all those who do not express an opinion here should be weighed into this poll) the wording is:

• Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?

-- PBS (talk) 00:59, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

• #4 (Other) (edit conflict)As has been stated and restated countless times since Dec 21, by Kotniski, EdChem, Kai445, Greg L, Eraserhead1, Dohn Joe, SarekOfVulcan, Enric Naval, JCScaliger, PBS, Certes, Kleinzach, Jenks24, Bkonrad, CBM, Binksternet, WhatamIdoing, Franamax, Mistymorn and Milkunderwood at discussions at /Archive_34#Clarification_of_recognizability_lost, /Archive_34#RFC_on_Recognizability_guideline_wording and #Poll, because while the title should be recognized as a reference to the article topic by someone familiar with the topic, for the uninitiated, it is the purpose of the article lead, not the article title, to identify the topic of the article - consensus supports: "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?". --Born2cycle (talk) 01:13, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other) No wonder I couldn’t find the previous 17:0 poll’s “#1 (to someone familiar)”; it had been turned into “other.” Was “Model T” not available? Inquiring minds want to know. PBS and JCScaliger are right: this poll is *pointy* indeed. At least it wasn’t “#1 Orange juice”, “#2 Apple juice”, “#3 Breakfast blend”, “#4 Chinese dioxin”. After a month of discussing this, enough has been said on this issue. Debating the same tired thing until the heat death of the universe is not anyone’s idea of fun. Greg L (talk) 03:43, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4. This is an unnecessary bit of wiki process that is wasting time better spent improving articles. The recent poll was perfectly clear and perfectly satisfactory: "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?." That's the wording I'm sticking with because it works. Binksternet (talk) 07:33, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• I vote for "Recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, but not necessarily an expert"(whatever number that is). Meant in the sense that I am familiar with what a dandelion is, but I do not recognize the name "Taraxacum", because I'm not an expert in botany. (WP:NC (flora) really does need to be changed).TheFreeloader (talk) 12:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC) {That means “#4 (Other)” Greg L (talk) 16:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)}
• I am responding to a note from Dick on my user talk page. My very strong preference is #4, and specifically for the wording of "title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic". I find the wording of #1, which I suspect Dick intended to be more or less equivalent in content but with a hateful, anti-reader tone, to be so needlessly and inappropriately offensive that it makes me doubt the sincerity of his claims to want to know what people actually think would be the best wording for this section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:15, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other) We already had support for using the familiarity clause in Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles#Once_and_for_all:_Poll_to_establish_the_consensus. This makes us choose between a clumsily worded familiarity clause and a wording that doesn't have that clause. I am sorry, but this is the stuff that politicians pull off to kill proposals they don't like: hoping that we reject a clumsy wording of the clause so he can claim support for killing the clause in its enterity. This is disruptive. Implement the wording that already got consensus and start sanctioning people who keep throwing blocks in the road. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other), as per others. Sorry I can't get more excited about this. MistyMorn (talk) 17:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other), the variant #1 of January poll. Also, I specifically object to addition of any phrasing which may imply that so named recognizability is the main, or most important criterion in WP:AN ("Article naming should prefer what the greatest…" or so). It is one of the criteria listed, among others. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 17:40, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• #4 (Other). Feels like deja vu all over again. I do have to say that I'm intrigued by the "recognizable to someone who is looking for the article" language suggested above. But the "familiar with...not expert in" language conveys the right idea. Dohn joe (talk) 17:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
• Comment trying to apply WP:COMMONNAME to this guideline is flawed. A simpler way of achieving this objective would be to abolish this guideline outright in favour of COMMONNAME – which, BTW, is not what I am advocating. None of the wordings proposed (including the current 'live' one) seems to strike me as achieving any meaningful distinction or is likely to 'get the job done' in reducing potential (and not crystallised) ambiguity in titling inside WP. --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 03:46, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion of recognizability poll

• This is WP:POINTY and WP:DISRUPTIVE we have had two polls both of which expressed a clear consensus. There is no point having a third as consensus on this is very unlikely to have changed in a month. I propose that this whole section is collapsed -- PBS (talk) 00:43, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

PBS, thanks for your comments. I did pass the idea by the three drafting arbs of the current title/caps disruption case, to make sure that they wouldn't see it as disruptive. All three said it looks good (Actually, Casliber gave me some suggestions that I implemented, but also said he'd look at it more later; so maybe I jumped the gun. If he objects we can decide what to do about it.). The "point", if you want to call it that, is to determine more finely what the intent was behind the various votes in favor of the "familiar with" thing. As you'll recall, a number of editors never got a proper chance to discuss ways to deal with the history or the concerns, as it got too quickly turned into a V1 vs. V2 vote. Some of the comments on the V1 votes in Greg's poll suggested that there were actually a range of points of view behind those votes. That's what I'm trying to bring out by slicing it differently; think of it as "extreme V1" versus "moderate V1" and other points of view. Maybe we'll learn something. Give it a try? Dicklyon (talk) 01:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

What happened to the mantra that consensus can change. It seems to drive our dysfunctional titling policy to everyone's satisfaction. If someone doesn't like a title they'll propose a change, regardless of how stable any given title has been. No rational policy reason required because our policy essentially allows anyone to suggest a different title is better than the current title and we we've given them dozens of conflicting ideas to support their particular position. Let dicklyon have his poll. I bet if we brought in a 100 diiferent editors, we might get a different answer.-Mike Cline (talk) 01:25, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm finding it helpful to even clearly understand the debate. The previous discussions were WP:TLDR, and coming from me that's saying a lot. While I have no gift for concision personally, a summarization like this is genuinely useful to get the "100 different editor" opinions you desire, because most of us are not going to wade through the raging mess that has preceded this. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 19:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

For a summary read #Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus and for more detail read User:Born2cycle/DearElen -- PBS (talk) 00:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

*This "poll" is disingenuous and disruptive. Born2cycle and Kotniski were perfectly clear about tbeir first preference: the language that stood before an accidental edit late May and the ongoing disruptions by Dicklyon and his friends: Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic? PBS expressly supported this at the last poll. It is not here; certainly the garbled #1, with its prejudicial label, has very little relationship to it. JCScaliger (talk) 21:44, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

The "prejudicial label" "Post-Modern" was meant to signify that it is not the latest version or proposal, but derived from it. Sorry if that was unclear. Dicklyon (talk) 04:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

I tried to be perfectly up-front about my intent, which was to see how the supporters of the Kotniski/Born2cycle version divide up when things are sliced differently. It appears that there is little support for the extreme interpretation, which is what I thought Born2cycle and Kotniski were aiming for. If that's the case, it's good to know, and there's no reason anyone needs to be upset about it. We've also elicited a range of attitudes that didn't come out clearly in previous polling. Let's see what else we get. And what's this about an "accidental" edit last May? I guess you didn't look at the history that I linked. Dicklyon (talk) 22:52, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I want what I've been saying for a month I wanted; several of us seem to. I remain perfectly prepared to discuss wording of that substance. My understanding of the history between 2008 and May 2010 is in my comment above. JCScaliger (talk) 23:08, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Response to SMcCandlish:

• • If I look up heroin, I would be like to be sure that I'm reading about heroin, not a class of morphine compounds which may include it (unless the redirect was vandalized). If the lead were adjusted to the title diacetylmorphine, I might have to read into the third section to be sure which one of these possibilities the article is. JCScaliger (talk) 22:48, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Dick, I suggest not conflating opposition to a particular clumsy wording with opposition to the interpretation associated with that wording. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:20, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

People to invite.

Several people who responded to Greg's poll haven't been heard from in this one. If nobody objects, I'll invite them: Eraserhead1, Dohn Joe, SarekOfVulcan, Enric Naval, Certes, Kleinzach, CBM, Binksternet, WhatamIdoing, Franamax, MistyMorn. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

• Sure, fine. This is as much fun as a saline nasal rinse. Let’s get it over with. Greg L (talk) 17:29, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, done; and I added Ohms law, who has also been involved but not in Greg's list. Dicklyon (talk) 05:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Refactoring

Be aware that not every editor will agree with your refactoring or even of the refactoring concept in general. Provide links to the original, uncut version, so others can check your changes, and if necessary go back to the original to clarify what an author actually said. This combination of refactoring and archiving will often prevent complaints that information was lost. Make it explicit that you have refactored something so no one is misled into thinking this was the original talk page.

I find that I am one of the editors that does not agree with the general concept. Since the first poll was diverted into charges about Noetica's equally contestable refactoring of B2C's edit, this undiscussed and unilateral refactoring seems particularly unwise. It also deprives my comment of its necessary context. JCScaliger (talk) 18:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Your objection is noted. The groundrules said that in the poll section you should comment only in your own section, and other responses should go in the discussion section, so that we'd end up with a clean list of opinions. You can perhaps solve the problem, and clarify the context of your comment, by quoting what you're responding to. Dicklyon (talk) 02:19, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Please stop this disruptive behavior. Does anybody else regard Dicklyon's presence on this page, his ill-posed poll, or his refactoring, as an asset to Wikipedia? JCScaliger (talk) 18:20, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Dicklyon seems intent on proving a point while under the scrutiny of ArbCom. The point being demonstrated however, may be one he didn’t intend. Given the way things have unfolded and the perception from several editors here that his poll seems *pointy*, his best move IMHO, would be to {{archivetop}} this whole thing. Greg L (talk) 20:42, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Just trying to get a more clear understanding of what people are thinking. Looks useful so far. Dicklyon (talk) 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Motion to close poll

In response to 05:25, 9 February 2012 (UTC) post: That is fine, Dicklyon, if you are curious about something. Often, such edification can be accomplished by leaving a post on individuals’ talk pages. However, polls under circumstances like this, where…

1. The project page is still locked down due to editwarring and disruption,
2. There was already a poll (17:0 for particular wording) showing there was wording for a guideline that met with community satisfaction
3. ArbCom got involved because of disfunction on this talk page
4. The sponsor of the poll is embroiled in complaints on the evidence page at ArbCom,
5. Given the latest trend in the poll after editors figured out what the “other” option meant,
6. And where a number of editors here have opined that this is a “WP:POINTY”, “WP:DISRUPTIVE”, “disingenuous”, “unnecessary”, this issue “has been stated and restated countless times”, and this “is an unnecessary bit of wiki process that is wasting time” means…

…Too many people perceive that your effort to discern nuances of the community’s views by seeing what happens when “things are sliced differently” is neither helpful nor—as you say—“useful”. In short, a significant number of editors who are experienced in this issue have opined that this poll amounts to WP:REHASH, which is tendentious editing. Thus, in my opinion, it is time to accede to those concerns; I see no point to persisting at this.

I invite other editors to opine whether or not they share my views on this matter. Greg L (talk) 16:19, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. At this point, I can only see this as endless rehashing and attempts to ignore the unanimous support on the previous poll. --Enric Naval (talk) 17:27, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

With the policy page locked, and Born2cycle backed off some, it seemed like a OK time to get some actual discussion going. I understand that not everyone is interested in discussing, or agrees, with me on that. Dicklyon (talk) 18:55, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• Very well. You want to persist. I had used the {{archive top}} to snowball the obvious community sentiment (perma‑link here) under the following reasoning in the header:

Given the latest trend of this poll after the community finally understood that “Other” encompassed the consensus view from the previous poll, and in light of the strong sentiment in the community that this poll violates WP:REHASH, it is time to WP:SNOWBALL this. I’m doing this to spare the community further disruption.

As the sponsor of the previous poll, this closure could itself seem *pointy*. Nonetheless, I don’t mind being WP:BOLD when it seems amply clear that there is exceedingly little enthusiasm for even having this poll, let alone persisting with it.

If any other editor feels this closure is unwarranted and continuing with it benefits Wikipedia, please feel free to revert me.

…and then you—not anyone else—took me up on the offer and reverted (∆ edit, here). Had I been in your shoes, I would have waited for someone else to step in and do that. But then, I’m clearly not you.

I must say that now that B2C has backed off, your persistence at flogging this dead horse notwithstanding that a handful of editors have now opined that this is not helpful is starting to make User:Born2cycle appear darn reasonable—even if he is loquacious beyond all comprehension.

I think I’m going to butt out of this now and see if anyone else in the community has a better way of dealing with your insistence on rehashing a settled issue. Greg L (talk) 20:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I have already asked Ellen of the Roads to implement the wording from the last poll, see User_talk:Elen_of_the_Roads#Please_implement_the_consensus_wording. --Enric Naval (talk) 21:22, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• Maybe the third time will be the charm. She had already been asked twice before here and here. Greg L (talk) 23:58, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• OK sorry guys, misunderstanding on my part. I had to take a couple of days out, and then I thought you'd sorted it out among yourselves. It's 1 am here , but I will get to it tomorrow. In the meantime, if you've already said it, consider it said and no need to add to it. If anyone hasn't opined, speak now or forever hold your piece. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, "sorted" might not be quite right yet. There are between 11 (confirmed in my poll) and about 20 (including sock JCScaliger) who want to implement the Kotniski/Born2cycle wording; and perhaps 8 (if they don't tell me I'm wrong) who don't think so, or don't think we've done all we can to reach consensus. So, yes, we all agree that we're outnumbered in our opposition. I don't know why Greg, Enric, and some others are in such a rush to avoid discussion. I thought that was Born2cycle's job. Oh, well. Anyway, this thing that Greg says about "a guideline that met with community satisfaction" is certainly not acknowledging the real situation. In spite of all that, I'm quite happy that my survey has clarified that the supporters of that language are NOT in favor of the extreme interpretation that I offered as an option. Dicklyon (talk) 02:03, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

If the “eight” editors whom you allege harbor views that are contrary to the consensus view truly had felt they had meritorious arguments, they should have participated in the poll. That they elected to instead shove their hands into their pockets and slink away rather than stand up and articulate persuasive reasoning shows they felt their arguments were weak at best.

We simply can not permit further stonewalling via tactics such as avoiding high-profile efforts at consensus building and then have you claim that those who hid in the shadows actually had really really really good arguments that could only be heard during the poll if you had kneeled, fervently wished for nice sounding words, and let their silent words resonate with your spirit. Such tactics can not be rewarded with arguments that still more discussion needs to occur until either A) the holdouts get their way, or B) the heat death of the universe puts an end to this.

The above 17:0 poll (which enjoyed significant “outside” attendance) was not only terribly lopsided, but there was consistent and thoughtful commonality to the reasoning accompanying each vote. Moreover, the latest poll reveals nothing new. This is not complex and the proper response to put an end to the disfunction here is clear. That is to honor the consensus view and then get down to the business of discussing how to expand upon that consensus view (or modify it since consensus can change). Greg L (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Why no action on implementing community consensus

Hey, I haven't followed the long discussion on this topic, so just a quick question. If there already is a consensus for changing the wording of the criterion to "recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, although not necessarily an expert" then how come it has not been changed yet? What is holding this back? Office action, arbitration decision?TheFreeloader (talk) 18:10, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• It appears that the admins are waiting for an ArbCom action over disruptive editing (ArbCom workshop and Evidence page) to move forward to certain findings (or possibly conclude) before issues such as the one you raised are addressed. See also “Request for edit, Poll”, above. Greg L (talk) 18:28, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Alright thanks. I must say though, this area seems to me to be somewhat outside the area the arbitration committee usually is concerned with (as defined here). I mean, I know they to some extent have in the past been involved in deciding on content, but being involved in the creation of policy, that seems to me like new territory for them.TheFreeloader (talk) 18:52, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

There's also no rule that normal editing has to stop merely because someone's complaining to ArbCom about a given line in a policy. The arbs know how to find old versions, and in the extremely unlikely case that they expressed an opinion about what the page ought to say, then we could change the page again. I see no reason to have this sit for weeks (or months) with a clearly anti-consensus version (as proven by overwhelming support in multiple discussions) while ArbCom goes through its lengthy process. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you both. Greg L (talk) 20:00, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. This seems well outside Arbcom's scope. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 20:06, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

That's all true. The lock isn't coming from the arbs, and they haven't expressed an opinion about it. The locking admin, or another, could unlock the page or do the edit if they wanted. On the other hand, it's also true as Greg pointed out above that "ArbCom got involved because of disfunction on this talk page". I understand that Greg is not wrong in blaming both Born2cycle and me, perhaps among others, for that disfunction. And he doesn't like my recent attempts to get some discussion going during the relative calm of the lock and time that B2C took off. But I try anyway.

Now, with JCScaliger, sock of Pmanderson, out of the way, maybe we'll even be able to talk a bit more easily. It's not yet time to focus on conclusions. My poll is bringing out some ideas worth considering and discussing. The fact that nobody took the other side in Greg's poll should not be interpreted as meaning that they all agreed on the intent. I am actually quite delighted to see that none of them agree with what I took to be B2C's intent, to use this narrowing of the recognizability provision to mean that "recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title." (or if they do agree with that intent, so far they haven't said so). If we can build on that clarification—to restrain B2C from doing that he seemed to be doing by jumping in the rewrite policy while in the midst of a discussion in which it had been cited, with the apparent attempt of excluding a recognizability argument in a situation relevant mostly to people not already familiar with the topic—then maybe we can converge on something that everyone will be OK with. Or not... – Dicklyon (talk) 20:17, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

• I concur with the opinion that it is time to implement whatever consensus is now. Unless there are new arguments, in is not good to perpetuate this limbo. Even if there are new arguments, their discussion may start from a fresh starting point. Kaligelos (talk) 20:42, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

The page block is going to remain as long as people keep edit warring.

As for whether there is a consensus for changing the wording of the criterion to "recognizable to someone familiar with the topic, although not necessarily an expert"... I am not completely sure that there is a firm consensus for that. I get the sense that a lot of people were unhappy with the current language, but they were just as unhappy with the language being proposed to replace it. I know that was my reaction. While the page is blocked, we should start floating third, forth and fifth options and begin the process of compromising until we find something that everyone is happy with. If we can do this consructively, then the admins will unlock. Blueboar (talk) 23:54, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No. Your entire second paragraph is just more of the same digging in heels and stonewalling and disruption that got us to this state of affairs in the first place. There certainly is a consensus; just not one you like. Your call to disregard the clear-as-glass community consensus and keep on debating until there is a consensus that meets with your satisfaction is not in the cards. Please familiarize yourself with WP:Consensus and advise where it suggests that “consensus” “means 100% of editors—particularly User:Blueboar—are in complete agreement”; it’s not there.

Dicklyon’s clever attempt to recast the very nature of the question by slicing and dicing the issue so the previous poll’s consensus view was slapped with a diminutive “Other” option in hopes no one would notice its absence and it might be trampled like the gladiator during the chariot race in Ben Hur clearly was not a successful strategy and didn’t go at all well. So…

No, we should certainly not engage in still more debate on this issue before implementing the wording the community clearly prefers. To do otherwise would just reward tendentiousness and stonewalling. Even this God-foresaken venue will once again have to start abiding by the letter and spirit of WP:Consensus. Greg L (talk) 00:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

And how do you know that people will keep edit warring when the page remains locked? Wikipedia is a project which has to work on some degree of trust. I also do not like that the notion that article locking should be used as a way to influence the decision-making process of the community. I think most people here would agree that a consensus has been reached here. It's not the job of administrators to step in and directly or indirectly overrule such a decision.TheFreeloader (talk) 00:11, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know; maybe so. But even if you count all 17 from Greg's poll as agreeing that consensus has been reached, I can still see at least another 8 who would disagree with that assessment (but I don't want to try to speak for them, so I won't list them). Does it hurt to consider other ways to work this out? Dicklyon (talk) 00:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes; it hurts. The community is sick and tired of the disruption your persistent WP:REHASHING induces. Give it up. But I’ll sit back and let you prove your detractors right about whether you have been a significant source of wikilawyering and stonewalling around here. It rather amazes me how people will continue to dig their own graves. Greg L (talk) 00:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I would like to see who those 8, who you claim do not see a consensus here, are. As I see it there are only two, you and Blueboar.TheFreeloader (talk) 00:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• You appear to be mistaking crass majoritarianism (i.e. pure numerical superiority) as "consensus". --Ohconfucius ^¡digame! 02:33, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

User:TheFreeloader, there was a minority crew of holdouts who decided to hang low during the poll and not memorialize the fact that they were part of the stonewalling crew. In short, they elected to not participate in the poll. Exhibiting a willingness to participate in a poll and articulate a reasonable-sounding argument that might persuade others is one of the central elements of consensus building. If a high-profile poll is conducted that brings in widespread participation from editors who had previously stayed away from this venue, and the holdouts who had been stonewalling and preventing progress merely slouch, stuff their hands in their pockets, and walk away, then that proves that they knew full well that their arguments were not sufficiently pursasive, or didn’t have sufficient numbers, or both.

This wasn’t my first rodeo on Wikipedia; I know how to conduct a poll. I foresaw that someone might try to claim that they couldn’t participate because the poll was an up-or-down vote on two options. So I made sure it stated right in the first rule that everyone was free to opine that the options were too limited and it should be something else. My poll was crafted to focus like a laser on consensus building, cut through the crap, pull the rug from under tendentiousness, foster a sense that outsiders could finally weigh in and be heard without being drowned out, and expose those arguments that were weak. The current holdouts forfeited because of lack of merit to their position.

Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes. In the military, it’s called “So sad – too bad.” On Wikipedia it’s called “wililawyering” which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded. Greg L (talk) 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

No willylawyering. Ever!Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:08, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Willylawyering? Is that anything like a cockfight or pissing match? Heh. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:19, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

As an outlyer who thinks this battle over the wording of a dysfunctional criteria is an utter waste of time because both versions are essentially meaningless and useless as policy, I am struggling to find a rationale for supporting one side or the other. It might be useful Greg and Dicklyon to explain why WP will go to hell if one or the other side in this debate doesn't get their way? Its like two children fighting over an ice cream cone in the heat the summer. If they fight long enough, the ice cream melts and nobody wins. Well IMHO, nobody wins in this scenario because the Ice Cream has already melted. --Mike Cline (talk) 01:16, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Whether or not you agree with the 17 people who participated in the poll (and the new numbers reinforcing that message in Dicklyon’s), you will have to respect it. If you wanted to influence others on this matter, you should have participated in the poll. I never suggested that Wikipedia will “go to hell”, as you say, if it goes this way or that. What does go to hell is the fun of engaging in the hobby of being a wikipedian when the collegial interaction in a collaborative writing environment breaks down. And it breaks down when intransigent editors don’t respect a consensus and edit warring and all manner of bad conduct makes this place so dysfunctional that the page has to be locked down and an ArbCom action started. Sad indeed. Try reading Wikipedia’s Five pillars; you’ll see that “consensus” is an important principle underlying all that occurs here. It’s not about the wording; it’s about restoring order and doing what’s right—respecting and honoring “consensus” is a major factor of that. Greg L (talk) 01:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent retort Greg. You have confirmed that is this a battle over the supremacy of Consensus, the actual efficacy of the policy is irrelevant. It is interesting that you chastise me for not participating in the poll, but confronted with this rule--your rule #1, what choice did I have? This is an up or down !vote; you are free to voice that you think the issue should be something else, but your vote may not further complicate matters by introducing a third (and fourth and fifth) option via such votes as Comment This isn’t the real issue. The text we should *really* be discussing (because I like it a great deal) is…. If you participate here, it is to merely vote for one of the above options. If you find that to be a less-than-satisfactory question, please don’t respond to it. In other words why are you chastising me for not participating when you very clearly with the above wording told me not too? --Mike Cline (talk) 01:43, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Your argument is nonsense and merits no further response than this: The wording is not irrelevant to the 17 people who participated in the poll. Please don’t be so quick to poo-poo that inconvenient truth as if you are the only “Big Picture©™®”-sorta dude on this planet possessing the unique capacity to see that there is *actually* no difference between the two versions. The consensus view is against your reasoning, as well as your wishes. You could have voted “this”, “that”, or “something else”. Goodbye for the rest of the day. Happy editing until next time. Greg L (talk) 01:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I thought that was actually a pretty good strategy in defining a poll and setting the rules, so that the answers would be relatively simple to interpret. I tried to do the same, with a different framing, but by including an "other" option I was hoist on my own petard. All those people would presumably have just not participated (or at least not according to the rules) if I had omitted that option. I'm just not as clever as Greg. That's why I don't play chess; I can hardly see a move ahead. Dicklyon (talk) 02:07, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, if this is a meaningless fight, then why keep it going by not letting whatever is agreed on be implemented. People will remain on high alert here until this consensus decision gets implemented. I do think it is quite ironic the amount of disruption on the talk page locking down this policy has caused, seeing as the protection was intended to reduce disruption.TheFreeloader (talk) 01:38, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Of course WP will not be greatly harmed if one side or the other gets their way; but do we even agree on what the two sides are? It seems that the side of Greg and some others is to cut off debate and stop talking, as opposed to some of us who want to use what seemed like a calm to discuss ways to find a better option. Obviously, neither outcome is terrible, though I still think that letting B2C win something that he started in such a bad way would be a bad precedent. People should know that they don't get to rewrite policy right when it has been cited in an argument that they're in. That's my main beef. Now that he has said he didn't really mean to completely devalue recognizability to people not already familiar with the topic, we have a point of commonality to work with at least. Why not give it a try? Dicklyon (talk) 01:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

And since TheFreeloader would like to see my list of eight, here they are; I don't want to try to speak for them, but I counted based on what I thought they'd feel about this, based on their previous statements on this page, so I hereby invite them to add a comment here, or correct me if they agree that consensus has been reached (they might very well agree, even they oppose it). Anyone who feels they should be notified of this, please feel free:

• User:Arthur Rubin
• User:Bkonrad
• User:Blueboar
• User:Dicklyon
• User:Mike Cline
• User:Noetica
• User:SMcCandlish
• User:Tony1

– Dicklyon (talk) 01:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmm, that list does look quite dubious, looks to me like you are grasping at straws there. But more important, I really think it is quite objectionable if the main reason you have for not wanting this to go through is that Born2Cycle happens to support it. Arguments based on who else happens to support something must come very deep down on Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement. I think it is bad wikiquette to hold grudges like that, and I think it is POINTy to hold the whole community hostage because of a personal vendetta like that.TheFreeloader (talk) 02:24, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree it's "dubious". Six have spoken for themselves in the survey, and I'm only guessing from what they said that they don't agree we have achieved consensus. I haven't heard from the other two on this page recently, but they've been accused of agreeing with me too much, so maybe. And I forgot about Ohconfucius and Ohms law, who are maybes, too. Maybe they'll say; maybe not.

From day 1 it has never been about B2C happening to support it. It's about him initiating it the way he did, to move policy to his side in an ongoing argument. If we can once get back to a semi-stable situation in which he is not rewarded for his misconduct, and discuss it, then if people want to go that way I would be much less concerned. As it stands, I remain very concerned, especially as he continues to deny the reason for the previous rewording, referring to it as "inadvertant" even though it came right out of a discussion in which that very wording was what was being criticized (the May 2011 discussion). Dicklyon (talk) 02:36, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

FWIW, I (bkonrad) have expressed a position in the most recent of the interminable polls above. I liked Arthur Rubin's suggested compromise "recognizable to someone who is looking for the article" and also the "recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in)" phrasing. Either would be preferable to the "vintage" version. older ≠ wiser 13:57, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem being including on that list just up above. I'm going to make a "new argument" (that I know of - I didn't plow through every word of the TL;DR wall of text on this issue), per Kaligelos, above. I could live with "looking for", though it's a bit tautologous (it's not like we name things on purpose to make them hard to find!). But the "familiar...not necessarily expert" wording is too WP:CREEPing and smacks of the begging the question fallacy and putting the cart before the horse. This has come up many times before in many contexts. E.g., at WT:DAB we came to the conclusion that disambiguations like "Jane Smith (painter, 1902-1987)" were a stupid and "reader-hateful" way to disambiguate, because people are coming to WP to find out Smith's birth and death dates, not because they already have it memorized. We cannot presume that any given reader knows jack yet about the topic they're looking for. It might be something they overheard on CSI. It might be something that came up in a text book that presumed prior knowledge that the student didn't have. Maybe it was something dimly remembered from a bar/pub argument. Or whatever. You don't know, and I don't know, and the closer we get to trying to predict what knowledge the reader already has the closer we get to failing as a general-purpose encyclopedia. If this issue has already been addressed, I'd appreciate a quick precis. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:09, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Recognizability - a third option

OK... I have stated that I would prefer a third option. Here is a suggestion:

• Recognizability - Is the title a recognizable name for, or a recognizable description of the subject or topic? If the title is a proper name, is it one that is commonly used by reliable sources when they refer to the subject? If different sources use different names, look to see if one stands out as being used significantly more often than others - if such a name can be identified, that name should be used as the title (see WP:COMMONNAME, below). If the title is descriptive, would someone searching for the topic recognize the title as referring to the topic?

This is by no means a final proposal. Think of it as an initial draft of the direction I think we should head. Please comment. Blueboar (talk) 03:28, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

That seems like a good step to me. A little wordy, but the words do serve to clarify how the concept applies to different important situations. It doesn't take a position on recognizable to whom, which is OK by me, but might meet with resistance from some of our wiki-friends. Dicklyon (talk) 06:04, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Is there a reason to specify "whom"? Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

• I am afraid this proposal conflates another criterion into it: " is it one that is commonly used" - sounds familiar? Also, for descriptive titles the problems are completely different. Concluding: thoroughly disagree in all and in parts.

At the same time this example shows that this "list of 5" diverges from actual policy content: "Common usage" is not the same as "recognisability" nor any other of "several questions" . How about recalling the wikipedia:Summary style, inverted pyramid, etc., and review the whole structure? Kaligelos (talk) 16:33, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Also, as you know, better is an enemy of good. Nothing prevents us from updating the current bad definition with the consensual improvement while eternally pursuing the ideal.Kaligelos (talk) 16:33, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I think we have a more fundamental disagreement... you see, I don't think of Recongizability as a "criterion" at all... it isn't a "rule" to be followed or enforced... I see it as a broad "principle" - a goal to be aimed at. Common usage (as expressed in WP:COMMONNAME) is a subsidiary concept that under-pins that principle (and others). It's how we determine what is recongizable.

Another way to think of this is: Recognizability is the goal... Common usage is the method by which we achieve that goal. Blueboar (talk) 17:39, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Your logic makes sense... But again: take look at Naturalness – What title(s) are readers most likely to look for to find the article?. Just the same, we may say her as well "naturalness is a goal" and "common usage is a method" . This our dialog reaffirms my suggestion: review the whole structure of principles. In particular, clarification of "goals vs. methods" may make sense to be added into the policy. And this reaffirms my vote of opposition here: it is bad to mix and merge the definitions of "methods" into definitions of "goals", because, as you and me seem to agree, one method may undepin several goals. Kaligelos (talk) 19:32, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

BTW, the policy does not say that Recongizability is a "criterion" or a "rule". As I read the policy, the criterion or the rule is only one: reasonable application of "answers to several questions" in murky waters, keeping in mind that in different situations the "questions" have different weight. In other words, these principles must be discussed when straightforward rules or crirteria do not work. In still other words, these "questions" are the "rules of the engagemeent", not the "rules of selection". Kaligelos (talk) 19:40, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem with a broader review and rewrite of the entire policy (in fact, I think that would be a great idea)... I was simply addressing the more immediate issue of rewriting the current Recognizability section and attempting to resolve the current edit-warring battle over "who's version has consensus". Blueboar (talk) 20:01, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

There is a consensus by any usual measure of 17 to 0. If the words need tweaking we should start with that as the base line. If it takes this long to rewrite one sentence then what chance of a complete rewrite? Compete rewrites tend to be done by well intending cliques, I would remind you of WP:Attribution (poll) saga and the upset that caused. -- PBS (talk) 23:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

I think that "Recognizability – Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic" is an adequate description of what Recognizability can be briefly described as. I do not think that the more verbose version you have given above is as good because it introduces ambiguity take for example "If different sources use different names, look to see if one stands out as being used significantly more often than others". What about the "not necessarily expert in" just because it is commonly used by experts does not mean it is recognisable to someone who is familiar with the subject but not an expert in it. -- PBS (talk) 23:55, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

a side discussion on Recognizability and Naturalness as goals

Thinking a bit about Kaligelos's comments... I do think that Recognizability and Naturalness are related. In some ways, they may even be the same goal... but for different types of article titles.

I am thinking that Recognizability really relates more to titles that contain proper names, while Naturalness really relates more to purely descriptive titles... cases where the topic being discussed does not have a set "name" (ie where there is no common name or terminology to recognize). In these cases, we have to string together a phrase that refers to the topic in a natural way... something that when a reader searches for the article they say "ah, yes... this is probably what I was looking for". Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 23:13, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Recognisability is to do with common name. But many encyclopaedias although using he common name, then index on some form of logical ordering, or even use ids and then link to the article with the equivalent of Wikipedia's redirects. Wikipedia does not do that because it uses "Naturalness" which is primarily to do with word ordering (so that article titles can be directly linked from the text in another article). Praise-God Barebone could be under the article title Barebone, Praise-God and Paris, Texas could be ordered "State, provinces, town" for disambiguation purposes as in Texas, Paris rather than "town, province, state" ordering them as they are naturally/usually ordered in English. -- PBS (talk) 23:35, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Another approach to examining the uselessness of recognizability and naturalness as policy

When one evaluates titling decisions and especially contested titling decisions in our RM process, it is very rare to find Recognizability or Naturalness invoked as a policy reason for a title change. So following the mantra that many of us subscribe to, that policy should follow and document practice wherever possible, I decided to think about this differently. What are the major choices we’ve made as a community relative to article titles, and what were the alternatives to those choices that we’ve essentially rejected through policy statements and practice. If we could agree on that, we might be able to agree on the most functional policy wording to convey that practice to the rest of the community. So the following list displays in my view the choices we’ve made and the alternatives we had. It is organized by priority. In other words, think of it as a policy ladder where a previous choice has precedence over and informs the following choices. I have bold faced the choices I think the community has made. I’ve intentionally left out neutrality as it requires some special thinking which can be addressed later.

• Sources (What is the source of the title wording?)
  • As supported by reliable secondary sources
  • As contained in Original Research, primary sources, etc.
  • Pure fantasy, made up names, fanciful constructions, et. al.
• Type of Name (Names of most things have alternatives and those alternatives can be characterized as follows)
  • Official Names (names issued by official organizations, entities, etc. these might be scientific names, legal names (people and entities), government names, etc.) – Organization X is the official name keeper and it determines that XXXXXX is the official name. (most restrictive and least encyclopedic)
  • Authoritative Names (Names that an authority on a subject uses. Authoritative names are usually found in sources that are scholarly, or at least come out of some type of structured, disciplined process) – John Doe is the authority on subject XXXXXXX and says XXXXXXX is the name used for this subject. An authoritative name may be an official name, but an official name is not necessarily the authoritative name. (less restrictive and more encyclopedic than official names)
  • Common Names (Names that are most widely used by all types of sources—official, unofficial, authoritative and general media). (least restrictive and the most encyclopedic for a generalist encyclopedia). A common name may indeed be official or authoritative, but it is the commonness that is the important characteristic.
• Ambiguity (Names may or may not have some level of ambiguity)
  • Uniqueness – (Demanded by the Wiki software)
  • Little or no ambiguity (Titles require enough detail to leave no doubt as to what the subject of the article is about. The more articles that exist with a related title, the most disambiguation information must be added to the title to ensure no ambiguity between articles exists. This represents the idea of detailed disambiguation.
  • Moderate ambiguity (Titles should contain sufficient detail to allow readers to make informed navigational and search decisions, but without ensuring that every navigational or search decision is unambiguous. (This represents our current practice of reasonable levels of disambiguation).
  • High levels of ambiguity (Titles require only sufficient differentiation to make them unique, as long as titles are unique, it doesn’t matter whether or not there is serious ambiguity of titles among a bunch of related articles.) This represents the idea of Primary topic and skimpy, overly concise disambiguation.
• Style (What is the visual form that we like to see in our titles)
  • Rigid consistency – All titles must conform to rigid style standards to include parts of speech, capitalization, punctuation, abbreviation, structure etc.
  • Moderate consistency – Basic style standards are delineated through MOS and naming conventions and should guide the visual form of our titles (literally and comparitively), but not in a rigid, one size fits all way.
  • No consistency – Basic style standards are irrelevant, anything goes.

So there is only one question that I seek an answer from the rest of the community. Does this list accurately reflect the choices we’ve made as a community and community practice regarding titles?--Mike Cline (talk) 17:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

With regards to primary topic, no. Current practice (with a few exceptions) is to disambiguate only where necessary. If there is "serious ambiguity of titles among a bunch of related articles" there is no primary topic. older ≠ wiser 17:40, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

So maybe current practice lies somewhere between moderate ambiguity and lots of ambiguity? Which is OK if that's what we want. But IMHO, Primary Topic as a practice results in serious ambiguity and drives some associated bad behavior, but thats periferal to my question. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 17:48, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

From the way you describe it, I think you may misunderstand primary topic. older ≠ wiser 18:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I think I understand it perfectly. Primary Topic is really grounded in Common Name but is discussed under precision which is really all about dealing with ambiguity. When we designate something as Primary it actually becomes more ambiguous. For example John Doe, John Doe (singer) and John Doe (architect). In this case John Doe is 10X more common than the others and the primary topic, but John Doe is really John Doe (author). John Doe as a primarly topic is very ambiguous when compared with the other John Does. As I said above, this may be perfectly acceptable with the community, but there's baggage associated with it. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:38, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I find your explanation rather confusing. It appears you disagree with the very concept of primary topic. I think that may be a different discussion altogether. If you take that to the logical conclusion, why have the article at London when there are so many ambiguous topic with that title? older ≠ wiser 18:58, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I do think Primary Topic has some baggage with it that makes it less than good policy, but as you have said and I concur, that is another discussion all together. We currently have practice that deals with ambiguity. But what we don't have well thought out is where in the process of deciding an article title does the ambiguity discussion kick in. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:03, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

The purpose of the policy

I think I see why we are having difficulty agreeing on language here. I think we have a disagreement over the basic purpose of the policy. I have been focused on this from the point of view of giving instruction that applies to initial article creation - "How to come up with the best title when you are creating an article". Others are looking at it from the point of view of RM - "How to settle disputes when titles are challenged". Realistically we need a bit of both, but this difference is impacting the "tone" and word choices we are using. Blueboar (talk) 19:45, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar. Excellent observation. I would argue that well written policy would address both situations equally well. The only difference between the two is that at the time of article creation, the title decision is the 1st title decision and the only alternative titles in play are those that might be in the head of the article creator. Once an article has been created, content and sources added, changes, etc. over time, alternatives to the original title come into play. Those alternatives are dealt with through page moves and RM discussions. The policy governing the title decision whether it be the 1st one or a subsequent one should be the same. I think where we struggle is that we are finding it difficult to separate policy statements from implementation process. Even if the policy for titles was as simple as I proposed in discussions well before this, there could (and probably should be) different implementation processes for new articles than there are for RM type decisions. I could envision WP:AT structured something like this:

• Title Policy (These are clear, concise, prioritized and unequivocal statements and used to make policy based title decisions)

  Deciding a title for a new article (This is a guideline describing the best way to determine an acceptable title for a new article. This is not a policy statement, but a process description on how to implement the policy above in a new article title decision)

  Resolving alternative title discussions (Again, this is a guideline describing the best way to determine an acceptable title for an article where editors are proposing alternative titles. This is not a policy statement, but a process description that aids editors in reaching policy-based consensus when alternative titles are in play.)

The way it is now, so much that is written on the policy page isn't really policy, its process description that get invoked as policy. That is very dysfunctional but not difficult to fix if editors would just realize thats whats going on.--Mike Cline (talk) 21:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm... not too bad... I would add one structural element before your "Title Policy" section:

• (Lede) - 1) Definition of "Article title". 2) Attributes of a good article title

This would, to some degree, be a philosophical statement... explaining why we have created the "rules" which are to follow... something that would lay out the goals behind the rules. We need to state the goals so that editors understand why we have the rules that we do.

Such a statement would greatly help when it comes to combating instruction creep. We need to avoid the impression that "the rules" are more important to policy writers than the goals behind the rules. Too often, policy writers that focus on "the rules" tweek and expand them to the point where they no longer have any real connection to the goals. Yes, policy does need rules, but when writing rules we need to ask: "How does this rule help achieve the goals we have laid out". By stating the goals first, we would also help clarify when it might be appropriate to make an exception to a rule (if, in a specific instance, a rule would prevents us from achieving the goals of the policy, we should ignore the rule.) Blueboar (talk) 14:33, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar, I do think it is important to explain Why a particular policy or set of policies exist. However care must be taken ensure those explanations do not undermine or lend undue equivocality to the policy. Care must be taken to ensure that the wording in an explanation is taken out of context and invoked as a policy that's not really what the policy says. First and foremost, policy should be clear, concise, measurable and unequivocal. It interpretation should be easy. On the other hand its application is always contextual. In the case of WP:title we essentially have 5 policy buckets that must be prioritized and harmonized to ensure interpretation is clear and that contextual application is easy. You titled this thread The purpose of the policy. If I were to answer that in a single sentence, I would answer it this way: The purpose of WP:AT policy and associated guidelines is to ensure that the great majority of WP article titles are appropriate for the article and an encyclopedia without undue expenditure of editor energy to achieve the desired level of Appropriateness. The policy should not be about Perfect or Best titles, because the cost to achieve that is too high. I certainly hope others will join in this discussion because as of now, you and I are in sync. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I think we are almost in sync. We are expressing things a bit differently, but are mostly in agreement. I think the problem with the policy as it is currently written is that the 5 points (recognizability, naturalness, etc.) have been written about in a way that makes readers think they are "rules"... when they should be stated as being "goals". I don't think we should abandon them... but we should make it clearer that they are goals... attributes that a good title will have... and not rules. Once we make that clear, we can go on to note that because recognizability is a goal, we have come up with a "rule" to help us achieve that goal... WP:COMMONNAME.

Our one remaining disagreement (or at least what I think may be a disagreement) is your idea of trying to prioritize the 5 attributes (ie say that one is more important than the others)... I don't think that is possible. They are all equally important. Yes, sometimes they do come into conflict, and so we need to choose between them. But, which attribute should take precedence is a decision that will be different from article to article... it depends on the specific article and its unique circumstances. It is a determination that has to be made on an article by article basis, not at a policy level. Blueboar (talk) 16:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I think we are in conceptual process disagreement not policy disagreement. The nature of that disagreement is also clouded by the introduction of process elements that don't bear on the question. Your statement: But, which attribute should take precedence is a decision that will be different from article to article... it depends on the specific article and its unique circumstances. It is a determination that has to be made on an article by article basis, not at a policy level. is indicative of that. Indeed all title decisions are made by consensus, or at least the absence of opposition on an article by article basis. That is not in dispute, at least on my part and clearly not on your part. But that discussion should have some structure, and I believe indeed some of these policy elements do have precedence over the others. Given the four buckets I list above--source, type, ambiguity and style, I think the precedence is clear. Think about this generically, not a 1 in 3.7M example. 1. Would we ever sanction titles that cannot be supported by reliable sources? I think the answer is clear. No. Therefore source (RS) has precedence. 2. Would we ever adopt an ambiguity or style solution to a title that required the use of Official names?, No, we default to Common Names because that gives us the greatest latitude and most number of encyclopedic alternatives for a title. Common Name (you'll note I have said Common Name as a general policy, not The Common Name as a specific alternative) has precedence over ambiguity and style. 3. Would we adopt a style for a title that ignored the requirements of disambiguation? I don't think so? I hope you see what I am saying here. The final title determination may have to consider all four elements to reach consensus, but that is not done in isolation of one element nor in the absence of some structured relationship between them. It would be like (actually in current practice is already like), telling the editors in an RM discussion that we are going to decide this title based on MOS only, all the other policy elements of the title aren't relevant--sources, commonname, and ambiguity, so lets figure locally what we think the best style is for this article. This is one area we have to be in sync on because if we aren't we aren't going to get very far. Four to the fourth is 256. That's way to many permutations of policy element to generate an appropriate title. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:49, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Going forward - note from the admin who has the page locked

This page was locked to prevent a content dispute becoming disruptive, and since then there has been discussion.

I'm not convinced this discussion has resolved. We had a totally worthy poll, in which a number of people voted for option one, and a similar number of people said that the problem was something else. Particularly in light of the discussion that has just started above, I think they are probably right. There are two areas where guidance is needed:-

1. how to decide what you should call an article when you create it
2. what factors should be significant if there is a dispute

The answer to 1 can be of the form "a name you think people/most people/people who might be looking/English speaking people/people familiar with the topic will recognize", because it's down to the article creator.

The answer to 2 has to create the basis for a community discussion, and since "because I think so" seldom creates much light in these discussions, would probably be better based on something that might be evidenceable eg "use in reliable sources/search engines/government publications/what it says on the tin"

Having said all that, and recognising that

• "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic?" and
• "Is the candidate title a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?"

... or indeed any other variation in these words, is only really saying to the article creator "do you think this is recognizable..."

So however it's worded, that criterion will pretty much always only guarantee you get the word the article creator uses for it, and it is the rest of the criteria that control whether he uses that first response.

So...is there actually any point in arguing about which set of wording is used. "What's that wet stuff off the coast of Normandy?" "C'est La Manche." Is that "a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic?" "Oui." Of course it is - if the someone is a Frenchman. It's the rest of the criteria that determine that the article is English Channel, and there is a redirect from La Manche.

With this in mind, if I unlock this article and GregL makes his change, will the rest of you instantly revert him. Or will you continue the sensible discussion to disambiguate "what to call your article" from "what criteria to use when there are disputes as to article titles".Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:42, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Elen, where have you been all my life? Nicely said! --Mike Cline (talk) 13:46, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

• Quoting Elen: With this in mind, if I unlock this article and GregL makes his change, will the rest of you instantly revert him. Or will you continue the sensible discussion to disambiguate "what to call your article" from "what criteria to use when there are disputes as to article titles". Interesting question.

  Note the *reasoning* in the above “this, that, or neither” poll. Most of the 17 editors there, many of whom had previously avoided this page because it wasn’t friendly and functional, exercised care to accompany their !vote with thoughtful reasoning. According to Wikipedia:Consensus#Consensus-building by soliciting outside opinions : Responses indicating individual explanations of positions using Wikipedia policies and guidelines are given the highest weight when discerning a consensus. That page also says this:

In determining consensus, consider the quality of the arguments, the history of how they came about, the objections of those who disagree, and existing documentation in the project namespace. The quality of an argument is more important than whether it represents a minority or a majority view. The arguments "I just don't like it" and "I just like it" usually carry no weight whatsoever.

Greg L (talk) 23:36, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Much of that reasoning was presented in my comment associated with the change I originally made, and in the comments made in support of it[4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13].

All that was stated within 24 hours of my edit and explanation, and no substantive reasons opposing the change were presented then (or since), which was back on December 20, 2011. That alone should have been more than enough to establish that we had consensus support for the change. But here we are almost two months later and still talking about whether it should be implemented. That fact that a few editors can employ status quo stonewalling techniques to hold a page hostage like this, for so long, contrary to consensus clearly established and re-established, is one of the reasons people leave Wikipedia[14]. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:42, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

But it isn't all about you, you know. Consensus is an odd thing, sometimes it really takes a while for everyone to figure out where they are at, and calling it stonewalling, holding a page hostage and things like that really isn't helpful in the long run. I am going to unlock the article. I do expect the change GregL worked on to be made. I do not expect anyone to revert it instantly. Hopefully, folks can continue the larger discussion about the policy, because that strikes me as a valuable thing to do, having got to this point. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:40, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I have real life that puts food on the table and creates a financial mechanism to prevent my wife’s Visa-card balance from increasing to one Googolplex. I don’t watchlist pages and have limited time to come to WP:Article titles to see if it is unlocked or not. So it doesn’t have to be me who makes the change. Anyone may make the required edit after the unlock. It is this version of the WP:AT, dated 23:56, 23 January 2012.

From thereon, we clearly need to have genuine discussion and Five pillars‑compliant consensus building as the guideline page is further improved.

Moreover, I would greatly appreciate it if editors here didn’t call this “Greg L’s change” or “Greg L’s edit.” If anything, I would prefer it be called “the GEBDSEPCKJOCBWFM edit,” after the 16 non‑PMAnderson‑sock editors who took care to offer insightful reasoning for why they unanimously support #1 (to someone familiar). Greg L (talk) 02:34, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Elen, of course it's not about me. I know consensus sometimes takes a while to figure out. But in this case there was no question at all from the outset. Consensus support for the edit that I made on Dec 21 precisely because I was confident it had consensus support (but I also explained this on the talk page simultaneously) was established by every single editor who commented substantively about it (in support, unanimously) within the first 24 hours of my making the change.

Sometimes words like stonewalling and hostage have to be used to help others understand that that is what is going on. --Born2cycle (talk) 02:58, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

---

I realize that B2C doesn't consider my articulated objections to be "substantive"; fortunately, my main objection—that he inserted it during an argument to further his position that recognizability to peope not already familiar with the topic is of no weight in naming considerations—has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll. Procedurally, it still sucks that we couldn't just reset his policy change made during an argument that it affects, then discuss and go on from there. But at least we did get some discussion of alternative approaches started. And Greg, if we name your change for those of us who "unanimously" opposed it, the acronym will be a little shorter and easier to remember. Or we just call it what it is, the Kotniski/B2C version, as facilitated by Greg L. Dicklyon (talk) 03:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, personally I prefer to think of it just as Kotniski's version, without the "B2C as facilitated by ...". What I've objected to all along is the idea of anyone just jumping in and making substantive changes to policy or guideline pages without prior notice or discussion, or during discussion without consensus. Milkunderwood (talk) 04:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

WTF??? If you object to that, why did you support the version that both Kotniski and B2C inserted, on different occasions, each without prior discussion, over the version that came out of the May 2011 discussion? See User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#Aug. 2010 – planting the seeds of dissent and User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#The Dec. 2011 flareup. – Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, this issue never even came to my attention until 26 January 2012, and this page was already hugely bollixed up - not only with a lot of innocent-sounding filibustering that I found objectionable and offputting, but also with multiple polls that kept asking questions that were differently phrased. I don't much care for either of the wordings; but of the two versions that we're supposed to choose between, as far as I understand it, I prefer Kotniski's. I don't know and don't care who "started it". While it may be technically legal to make edits to a policy page without notice, discussion, and consensus, it's bad form. Milkunderwood (talk) 05:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you should be sorry. You state a principle you believe, yet you fall for the false dichotomy that B2C and Greg presented to distract people from the actual issue. Thanks for showing up and further gumming up the proceedings with noise based on ignorance of what's going on, like Greg did. Dicklyon (talk) 06:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

(Tacky response deleted) Milkunderwood (talk) 07:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I too prefer "Kotniski's version", because he was the one who came up with the wording in 2010 which was obviously inadvertently removed in May 2011. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

If you keep calling it "obviously inadvertently" I'm going to have to keep pointing you at the May 2011 discussion, where those words were explicitly criticized and removed. See User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#The May 2011 correction. – Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

As you should know, I read that May 2011 discussion prior to making the the 12/21 change which started all this, and pointed it out and discussed it in the talk page comment which accompanied the change. As I explained almost two months ago, "I don't see the question of "recognizable to whom?" being addressed there. ". It was dismissed as nitpicking, implying it's not important, not that it's wrong. That's why I say the removal was inadvertent. The import of that clarification -- addressing to whom the title is to be recognizable -- was clearly not realized.

Further, after I brought the discussion to his attention[15], Ohm's Law (who had made the May 2011 edit) clearly indicated he too did not realize the significance, and verified that the goal of the edit was "simplifying what was being said"[16], not changing what was said. Again, since they changed the meaning of what was said without realizing it, that's inadvertent. And this directly supported what I surmised in my original comment: "It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change. ".

Much consternation would have been avoided had you read and addressed what I originally explained regarding the Dec 21 restoration of the Kotniski wording. --Born2cycle (talk) 07:12, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Dick, even if I believe a change is made inappropriately because I believe the issue in question is in dispute (which wasn't the case here), I still feel obligated to provide a substantive objection to the change in question, per WP:REVEXP. Otherwise it might look like I'm using a procedural excuse to justify reverting a change that I prefer for no substantive reason, and I provide no way for others to know which it is.

But beyond that, in this case, one editor after another who did comment on the change substantively, in the first 24 hours and every week since then, favored it, and most explained why in some detail.

By the way, your poll rejected no interpretion - it showed a preference for one wording over another. Since the other wording - the one you claim is rejected - is not contradicted by the preferred wording, there is no evidence that it was rejected as an interpretation. In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:46, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

If that's where you stand then I must still strenuously object to the change. I think most users would have read where the poll choices were introduced with "These texts are intended to be suggestive of intent for what recognizability should mean, not proposals for final wording. 1) Something like this bit of text, intended to explicitly represent what I think Kotniski and Born2cycle were trying to get at in restricting recognizability to people familiar with the topic: * Recognizability – A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources; recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title." Everyone had their chance to support your interpretation, yet they distanced themselves from it. Do we need another poll to clarify that before committing to a next version? Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

It's not about me or where I stand. It's about where consensus clearly is and has been all along. The fact is that while some might object to the absolute wording, or something like that -- e.g., Blueboar is concerned that " '... familiar with the topic' language could be misinterpreted to mean we should ignore WP:COMMONNAME in favor of 'Official names'" -- nobody there expressed explicit disagreement with the essence of what your #1/Post Modern wording says. More importantly, people other than you, Noetica and Tony generally don't argue that titles should be recognizable to those who are unfamiliar with the topic, or that making titles recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic should be a goal. And the reasons it shouldn't be a goal have been explained multiple times. Most importantly, again and again clear consensus in favor of the Kotniski wording has been established and re-established, so regardless of what you or I think about how much or how little the meaning of your #1/Post Modern is consistent with consensus opinion, the Kotniski wording should go in. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Going forward? How about this. Implement the wording already. Then make a poll about "do we really really really want to give no weight to recognizability by people unfamiliar with the topic?" Then tweak the wording according to the proposals there. --Enric Naval (talk) 10:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

I thought I did that already, though I got nothing but shit for it. Didn't that interpretation (my choice 1) get unanimously denied? I guess you better ask again. Maybe you need to avoid using text in a quote box that someone could interpret as a literal rewriting proposal this time; mine gave B2C the leeway to say in his victory speech that he was only voting against the wording, not the question asked in the poll. Dicklyon (talk) 15:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Sub header inserted, about more frequent archiving for a bit

• As at 07:47, 13 February 2012‎ this talk page stands at ‎(437,479 bytes). Please, for accessibility’s can the gap between archiving be cut to 7 days for a bit? Meanwhile, as at 13:42, 24 January 2012‎ the project page, which is Protected, stands at (40,913 bytes). And the wiki goes on. NewbyG ( talk) 09:15, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Really stepping in it here, but, can't ya all agree to just have whatever redirects as are necessary?. Hmm maybe I am *not* getting wp:Primary? Sorry NewbyG ( talk) 10:23, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

You got it. The whole encyclopaedia would work just as well if the articles all had sequential IDs instead of titles, and you either put all the variant titles in the lede or created redirects for all of them. This is just so many angels, dancing on the head of a pin...LOL. As for archiving, I daren't go near the bot - it just goes off in a sulk if I even look at it. Feel free to improve the situation as you see fit. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:22, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

At 06:55, 14 February 2012‎ MiszaBot II took 16 thread(s) (older than 7d) to Wikipedia talk:Article titles/Archive 35. wt:Article titles is now down to (235,384 bytes). Archiving is on track, thanks user:misza for *your* prompt work. NewbyG ( talk) 12:08, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Warning from the admin who had the page locked

The page is now unlocked to registered editors. The minor change in wording that has been discussed to death can be made, and I will regard a reversion as edit warring. Other changes must be discussed first. Damage to the project is caused by edit warring on policy pages, not by having policy locked to a version that might perhaps be worded slightly better.

Constructive discussion is not achieved by polarisation, and - even if article titles doesn't end up under discretionary sanctions - if I see further aggressive, polarising, personalized debating, I will not hesitate to impose blocks and start proposing topic bans. There is no reason not to discuss calmly and agree next steps - no-one has family history going back to World War I on this topic. And remember, the encyclopaedia would work just as well if the articles had no titles just IDs, so to a great extent all this argument is irrelevant. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 10:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Just to be crystal clear here, is the minor change in wording that you're talking about the one that was decided on at #Once and for all: Poll to establish the consensus? Jenks24 (talk) 10:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's the only change that's been made since the unlocking, so I guess my question's been answered. Jenks24 (talk) 11:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes it was. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 22:11, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

"A good title will"

Is there a reason that the Recognizability goal has "candidate title" but the others do not? I think it would be better without "candidate".

Generally I think the goals would be best described using parallel terminology/construction. The context is: "A good article title will have the following characteristics:". For the subjects we have "The candidate title", "The title", "Consensus titles", "A good title", "A good title". For the verbs we have "will be", "will be" "usually use", "will be", "will follow". I propose we use "A good title" and future tense for all five goals:

• Recognizability – The candidateA good title will be a recognizable name or description of the topic to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
• Naturalness – TheA good title will be one that readers are most likely to look for to find the article. It will be the one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
• Precision – ConsensusA good titles will usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia article titles can be identical. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – A good title will be concise, and not overly long.
• Consistency – A good title title will follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

Jojalozzo 04:03, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd also like to copyedit the Naturalness goal to read: "A good title will be the one that readers are most likely to look for to finduse to search for the article." Any objections? Jojalozzo 04:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

The naturalness one isn't improved that way, and it's a real misfit. The others are about properties of a good title, but that one specifies "the one", using a rationale that doesn't even make sense. What one searches for and what one calls the article can be separate in a lot of ways. Consider films like The Graduate; it's easy enough to find by searching for "graduate" which is what people likely will do; but we're not going to name it that. Or to consider a current RM, on Nocturnal penile tumescence, it has been argued that people are more likely to search for "morning wood"; but we're not going to name it that, if all the sources call it the other, which is a perfectly understandable English phrase that's a lot easier to recognize for what it means than the slang term is (to readers familiar with the topic or not). And "It will be the one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles" seems to be designed to deny disambiguating or clarifying parentheticals; this certainly doesn't represent very well the realities that we have in WP. Maybe something like: "Naturalness – A good title will resemble what readers are likely to look for or search with to find the article." Dicklyon (talk) 04:36, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I am not proposing any substantive changes, just cleaning it up. If you want to propose changes in definition of the goal, then please do that in a separate section. Jojalozzo 05:04, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Like --Born2cycle (talk) 05:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, but your suggested change from "one" to "the one" seems like a change in goal. Same with changing "likely to look for" to "likely to use to search for". Dicklyon (talk) 05:18, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

And as for the "precision" criterion, that's another one that has been severely mangled and repurposed, starting with the same Aug 17 2010 Kotniski edit that mangled "recognizability". He basically took it out at that point, where it previously said "Precise – Using names and terms that are precise, but only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously." I haven't tracked where all it went from there, but at some point it came back with the "For technical reasons" bit attached, which suggests that "only as precise as is necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously" is to be interpreted as "only as precise as is necessary to prevent name collisions". That was never the intent before, and should not be the intent now. Who put that in there? Ah, here, it was all with the next two days: [17], [18]. Both PBS and PMA tried to undo what Kotniski did, but K prevailed; see the discussion section that followed his edit (since he didn't give any clue ahead of time). Dicklyon (talk) 04:46, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Joja, I presume you're proposing leaving the other two naturalness sentences as is, yes? With that clarification, which I think addresses Dick's well taken point, I have no objection. The point of naturalness is we prefer Bill Clinton to William Jefferson Clinton (both are recognizable, but the former is more natural). --Born2cycle (talk) 05:15, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm unclear on what you're saying is a well taken point and what you're saying you don't object to. The middle sentence, "A good title will be...the one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles" still has the problem of denying reality. It suggests that all titles with parentheticals, and many others, are "not good". Dicklyon (talk) 05:21, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

1. I presume Joja is proposing that naturalness end up looking like this:

   A good title will be the one that readers are most likely to use to search for the article. It will be the one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

2. Your well-taken point is: "What one searches for and what one calls the article can be separate in a lot of ways."
3. If naturalness was described solely in terms of searches (the first sentence), then your point would be a strong argument for changing it. But, since it has the other two sentences, I think that addresses your point well enough, so I don't object to any of Joja's proposal, assuming my point #1.
4. As to your argument about the middle sentence (links) having "the problem of denying reality", yes, titles that require disambiguation are "not good" in terms of naturalness. I mean, there is nothing "natural" about the "(entertainer)" part of the Madonna (entertainer) title. That's why we prefer not disambiguating when reasonably possible; that's one reason we recognize and value primary topics. because it means we can at least use the natural title for the article most likely to be sought. But sometimes it's not possible to use the pure natural title, and we have to disambiguate. So it is.

   Anyway, all this is irrelevant in this discussion because it's what it currently says and Joja is not proposing changing it. However, if we were considering a change, we might think about conveying that in disambiguated titles the naturalness criterion/goal applies only to the undisambiguated name portion. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:02, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying. To clarify my point: I object to the appended "copyedit" part of his proposal only. But while we're working on it, I'd change the other "the one" to "one" also, so it will be a more sensible description of a property rather than sounding like a prescription. Dicklyon (talk) 06:20, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

B2C: Yes, my proposal was to change the first sentence of Naturalness. I see now that adding "the" could be a substantive change so I withdraw that part of it. I proposed that addition because "most" is not logical/grammatical without "the". Instead I propose removing "most" to make it read correctly. My proposal there would be:

• Naturalness – TheA good title will be one that readers are most likely to look for to find the article. It will be the one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

I would also suggest removing "most" in the second sentence and if there's no objection I'll do that too but I'd would rather see that section get cleaned up than engage in a discussion of policy at this point. Jojalozzo 13:20, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with removing "the" from the proposal and with including the removal of "most" from the text as described immediately above by Joja. older ≠ wiser 13:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I too oppose introduction of "the one", or any other language that implies that only one title for each subject can be a "good title". Hesperian 06:24, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I'm opposed to the general direction this is heading in. The assertion

"A good title will be one that readers are most likely to look for to find the article"

is logically equivalent to its contrapositive:

"A title that readers are not most likely to look for to find the article is not a good title."

I don't agree with the contrapositive, and therefore I cannot agree with the proposed assertion. Hesperian 06:29, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I think the latest proposal to remove the word "most" changes the logical implications. older ≠ wiser 13:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

A couple of thoughts from someone teaches Strategic thinking and execution out in the world where we get paid to get people aligned around successful execution of well articulated goals. When you articulate a Goal, you should never use future tense, because then the goal is never achieved, its always in the future. Abandon the wills and replace with is or equvilent present tense. Goals should always be stated in present tense form, so that individuals can visualize success. Second, "a good title" implies "best title" or the goodest title and leads to endless discussions as to which alternatives is better. In fact, it gives license to create alternatives on a whim that someone thinks is better than the current title. Replace "good title" with acceptable title. If the statements read: An acceptable WP title is ... then editors can immediately visualize what characteristics a title should have to be "Acceptable". --Mike Cline (talk) 14:26, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion regarding tense, I'm not so sure about substituting acceptable title for good title. There may be any number of "acceptable" titles for an article, and for articles where passions are involved (for whatever reason), editors are going to discuss which of the many acceptable titles are better or worse. I don't think policy should preclude that nor even discourage it, though it should provide some recommendations for evaluating the various claims and means of establishing which one out of the many will be the title. older ≠ wiser 15:06, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

@Bkonard: IMO, adding "the" only emphasized the logical implications but did not change them and I agree that removing "most" does change it. If leaving it illogical is what it takes to to get it cleaned up, I'll accept that. However, I'm not clear if you are objecting to the change in meaning or just noting it. (see my response to Dick below) Jojalozzo 15:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

@Joja, I had in a separate comment agreed with both removing "the" and "most". older ≠ wiser 15:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Ah yes. Sorry for the oversight. (BTW, do you go by "older" or "wiser"? Jojalozzo 16:10, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike: I agree about present tense, but wanted to make minimal changes in hopes of actually getting something done instead of protracted discussion. I was not proposing the final wording, just a clean up of what we have. However, perhaps it is useful to make a few adjustments at this time, knowing we can change it again once it's a little better written:

A good article title will havehas the following characteristics:

• Recognizability – The candidateA good title will be a recognizable is a name or description of the topic that is recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
• Naturalness – TheA good title will beis one that readers are most likely to look for or search with to find the article. It will be the as well as one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
• Precision – ConsensusA good titles usually uses names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia article titles can be identical. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – A good title will beis concise, and not overly long.
• Consistency – A good title willfollows the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

Dick: I also prefer removing "most" from Naturalness because it makes it easier to combine it with other goals. Using the superlative means a) either that goal wins or it loses since there is only one title that can meet such a goal and b) there may be no title that meets both the reader goal and the editor goal so the two incompatible subgoals may render the overall goal moot. Can we leave the discussion of Precise and other final wording for later? I can think better when I'm not distracted by poor writing and illogic. Jojalozzo 15:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Hesperian: I may be mistaken, but I think removing "most" from the Naturalness goal addresses your objection. I think a contrapositive without "most" would be: "A title that readers are not likely to look for or search with to find the article or that editors do not naturally use to link from other articles is not a good title." Jojalozzo 15:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I am happy with the latest proposed wording. Hesperian 02:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Joja, thanks for your efforts on this. I agree that those are much better. Dicklyon (talk) 18:07, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Like. And I think good is better thanacceptable. After all, where we can even make the distinction, we prefer good titles to merely acceptable ones, don't we? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:49, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Although I much prefer Acceptable over Good we as a community cannot give old words new meanings because that confuses the hell out of everyone. So to level set:

good: adjective, better, best, noun, interjection, adverb [19]

As an adjective

1. morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious: a good man.

2. satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree: a good teacher; good health.

3. of high quality; excellent.

4. right; proper; fit: It is good that you are here. His credentials are good.

5. well-behaved: a good child.

(I'd say that only #2, 3 and 4 fit a WP title, where #3 is the most expensive to achieve)

---

acceptable [20]

As an adjective

1. capable or worthy of being accepted.

2. pleasing to the receiver; satisfactory; agreeable; welcome.

3. meeting only minimum requirements; barely adequate: an acceptable performance.

4. capable of being endured; tolerable; bearable: acceptable levels of radiation.

(I'd say #1, 2, 3, and 4) are all OK when it comes to WP titles #3 is solely dependent of the quality of the requirement. If the minimums are high, then the result is OK)

The question we must then ask which is the better term in terms of cost to achieve? (See At my Peril below). We won't resolve this now, nor do we need to. But recognizing there is a cost to the terms we use, is a first step. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Wrong section? Jojalozzo 21:34, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Not really, just responding to B2C above. Don't let it get in your way as we are on track here.--Mike Cline (talk) 21:43, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I think I'm following. You're saying that since more titles will qualify as "acceptable" than as "good", there is less cost associated with defining it this way. Yes?

I think the opposite is true. The more general and less specific the criteria are, then the more room for (costly) pointless debate we have. If the criteria is more specific and less ambiguous, then there is less to debate about.

For example, say we are deciding between two titles A and B. We agree both are acceptable, but only A is "good". If the criterion says "good", then we have nothing to debate - we just go with A. But if the criterion says "acceptable", it gives us no guidance on whether to go with A or B. How do we decide? A costly debate...

So if I am understanding you correctly, we agree on the goal - make title decision-making less costly; but we disagree on whether making the criteria less specific (merely "acceptable" rather than "good") helps or hinders achieving that goal. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:56, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

We are making progress as I support a more deterministic approach to reduce the need for costly debate, we both agree that that is a reasonable goal. I don't think that "acceptable" = not "good". I think "acceptable" will mean whatever standard we want it to mean (whatever it is, it ought to be clear, concise, measurable and reasonably unequivocal), but when there are multiple alternative titles that meet that standard, moving titles between alternatives is not cost-effective if they all meet the standard. The problem I have with "good" is that it always gives license to moving titles to "something better" which can result in costly debate. And when those debates are over and you add up all the costs--time, alienation, bad behaviors, whatever, we generally find that all we did is move from one acceptable title to another and didn't actually improve the content of the encyclopedia. --Mike Cline (talk) 22:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

We are making progress. Very interesting. So for years I've been thinking that the more the criteria help us narrow down to the one good/best/perfect title, the better, as there will be less to debate about.

But you're saying something quite different (thought not necessarily opposite) - you're saying that there may be any number of "acceptable" titles for a given article, and as long as the current title is one of those acceptable titles, and there is no good reason to move it from using that title (e.g., it's the only acceptable title for some other article), then we should leave it as is. I'll have to think about that. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:57, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Indeed, "acceptable titles" balances the needs of sourcing, commonname, ambiguity and style. In fact if our guidance is holistic, the first title decision(s) by the new article creator and new page patroller should result in an "acceptable title" from the get go. Without getting into a debate over style, here's an RM that took nearly two hours to move all the titles, fix double redirects, and a couple of history merges. All for the change in one letter in the title from lowercase to uppercase. Several of the articles were in very poor shape from a content perspective, but energy spent on RM discussion and making the moves was more important than improving the content. Additionally, several of the articles had actually moved twice previously between upper to lower, lower to uppercase. All energy spent without actually improving the content of the article. In my view of "acceptable", once an article title reaches our standard of "acceptability" it stays there unless there's a very strong external stimulus--new sourcing, etc. that says we need to regenerate a acceptable title using our "acceptable title" criteria.--Mike Cline (talk) 23:17, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

No. Acceptable is a binary concept: an on-off switch. A title is acceptable or it is not, with no middle ground. It is not our intent here to say that a title that lacks any one of these properties is unacceptable.

Goodness is a continuum. The degree of goodness of a title is determined by the extent to which the title has the properties outlined above. This is what we want: guidance on how to compare titles and decide which is better.

Hesperian 02:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Let’s kill the adjectives for the time being

As can be seen from the discussion above the use of acceptable or good as adjectives describing a title are problematic because of the wide range of interpretation they engender. So the following is the same language without the “acceptable” or “good” qualifier. If we can agree on the language without the qualifier, then once we agree on the overall principles involved with the difference between “Good titles” versus “Acceptable titles” we can decide whether or not the qualifiers are really needed, or can those principles be dealt with differently in another part of this policy.

A good WP article title will havehas the following characteristics:

• Recognizability – The candidateA WP article good title will be a recognizable is a name or description of the topic that is recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
• Naturalness – TheA WP article good title will beis one that readers are most likely to look for or search with to find the article. It will be the as well as one that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
• Precision – ConsensusA WP article good titles usually uses names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia article titles can be identical. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – A WP article good title will beis concise, and not overly long.
• Consistency – A WP article good title willfollows the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

--Mike Cline (talk) 17:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Very good, though we might also consider saying it consistently in plural/general terms:

A good WP article titles will havehave the following characteristics:

• Recognizability – The candidategoodtitle will be a recognizable Titles are names or descriptions of the topic that are recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
• Naturalness – Thegood title will beTitles are those that one that readers are most likely to look for or search with to find the article. It will be the as well as onethose that editors most naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
• Precision – Consensus good titles Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously. For technical reasons, no two Wikipedia article titles can be identical. For information on how ambiguity is avoided in titles, see the precision and disambiguation section below and the disambiguation guideline.
• Conciseness – A WP article good title will beTitles are concise, and not overly long.
• Consistency – A WP article good title willTitles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

--Born2cycle (talk) 17:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, the plural form allows the community to look at titles and title decisions holistically instead of on an title by title basis. If adopted this wording as a rationale for title policy sets up the transition to our actual titling policy which I believe is a balance of sourcing, commonname, ambiguity and style. Nice touch. --Mike Cline (talk) 17:39, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I like dropping the adjective. At first glance, I find the singular somewhat easier to parse, and in terms of usability, I think it might be easier for the uninitiated and those uninterested in policy wonkishness to apply guidance framed in the singular. Pluralizing seems to add a layer of abstraction. older ≠ wiser 17:46, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Pluralizing is a definite improvement that generalizes the guideline. The abstraction encourages an open perspective. Jojalozzo 18:06, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Singular or plural is okay with me. Hesperian 00:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I wish to test for consensus. Are there any objections to going with Born2Cycle's proposal, not as final wording but a minimal-change clean up? Jojalozzo 03:59, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I had removed the "For technical reasons..." sentences from the "precision" item already. Is someone wanting that back, with its redundant link and all? As for the plural and the removal of "good", I'm ambivalent. I sort of liked "A good title is..." (without the WP) but I won't object if others like this change. Dicklyon (talk) 04:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Go for it, but let's say "Wikipedia" not "WP". Hesperian 05:07, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• Merging B2C's version with Dick's recent shortening of Precision (lack of objections to his change suggest including it here) we'd have:

  Wikipedia article titles have the following characteristics:

  • Recognizability – Titles are names or descriptions of the topic that are recognizable to someone familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
  • Naturalness – Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors naturally use to link from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.
  • Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.
  • Conciseness – Titles are concise, and not overly long.
  • Consistency – Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles. Many of these patterns are documented in the naming guidelines listed in the Specific-topic naming conventions box above, and ideally indicate titles that are in accordance with the principles behind the above questions.

One last chance for objections. Remember this is not final wording, just clean up so we can review a cleaner version. Jojalozzo 15:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done Jojalozzo 18:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

At my peril

I am glad to see some movement here. The use of present tense is important when articulating goals. It has a proven track record in political, government, military, business and a myriad of social/cultural endeavors. The distinction between “Acceptable” and “Good” is more substantive and ultimately has to be a determination by a much wider WP community. I am going to introduce (probably at my peril) some thinking that I’d like everyone in this discussion to at least consider. Policy drives process that consumes energy and generates results. Regardless of endeavor or enterprise, it is the results that matter. But results always consume energy to achieve. In the case of WP, the results that matter are more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation.[21] A WP title decision as a result is just one small piece that contributes to the larger body of results. Where I think we fail as editors and “policy leaders” in trying to achieve those results, is a failure to take into count the “cost” of doing so. WP as a 100% volunteer enterprise has a unique income statement and balance sheet if you will. Our revenue is the time (hours) volunteers donate to the enterprise. Our expenses are exactly equal and immediate. We can’t bank any of our revenue because it is spent immediately. For every volunteer hour donated, that volunteer hour is immediately consumed by the enterprise. There is no profit or loss on our income statement. From a balance sheet perspective, it’s the equity line that’s important. Equity in our results terms means-- more content, more quality content, more editors and a much wider scope, geographically and culturally of content and participation. Our goal, as is the goal of every enterprise to some extent is to grow the equity on the balance sheet with the least amount of wasted energy or expense.

So how does that thinking impact WP:Title. There are three equations here. 1. How important is a WP article title to achieving the overall enterprise results we want? And 2. How much energy are we willing to spend to achieve the results we want? And 3. Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? This is why I personally think “Acceptable” is a better alternative that “Good”, but that's a more detailed evaluation yet to come. To close, if anyone would like to take a few minutes to read this: Stay out of the Balkans, it’s a little essay that discusses these ideas a bit more metaphorically. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Mike, I definitely agree on the present-tense wording, and I deeply appreciate your efforts to lead us to a new and better way to work together here. I'll do my best to support this new way of working. Dicklyon (talk) 18:06, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

This makes a lot of sense to me Mike and I'm pondering the implications. I do not think the goals wording is finished but I also do not want to lose any small progress we might have achieved by waiting while we discuss other improvements. Would you be willing to separate this discussion from my proposal in hopes we can come to agreement there and then address your suggestion on its own? Jojalozzo 19:07, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

 Done --Mike Cline (talk) 20:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I too am with you on the present tense point. But I'm not sure I agree there is substantive difference between "acceptable" and "good" - in many contexts they are synonyms (something that is good is acceptable - not good is unacceptable).

However, if I understand you correctly, 3 -- Are there ways in which we can reduce valuable volunteer energy expended on title decisions and free it up to more directly impact enterprise results? -- is what I was addressing in something I wrote at the ARBCOM event, here. In particular: " In order to avoid everyone wanting whatever they want and nobody ever being able to agree, we choose to have policies, guidelines and conventions to introduce determinism into our title decision process. In general, in terms of reducing disputes and debates, more determinism in our title-determining rules is better than less determinism." Do you agree with that? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:44, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I do agree, and recently asked another editor to think just that with this post:

Observations on titling process from two RMs-I was working through some RMs this morning and stumbled on two (and closed two) that are a bit illustrative of the points I was trying to make in these two discussions at WP:AT [22] and [23] . The first RM [24] walked us through a logical sequence of policy based evidence. What would have made this even more useful would have been subsequent evidence or at least acknowledgement of ambiguity and style issues. (Apparently there weren’t any in this RM). The second RM move was about ambiguity. No one actually addressed what reliable English Language sources said the common name was. Had they done so, it would have been evident that Orientale Province was a common English language name for this subject. As the closer, I did this review but it would have been much better in the RM process had the nominator and participants done so. When I closed this with a move to Orientale Province, I actually had a style question in my head--Should this really be Orientale province to comply with our WP style? I didn’t pursue it, but had it been addressed in sequence by the nom, the overall discussion would have been more effective for WP in the long run. The substance of these two RMs is inconsequential, it was the process that intrigues me. I am asking you to consider these two random examples from this standpoint. If we can begin to think about the whole titling process—new titles or title changes in a holistic way, then the words we use to articulate, explain and implement policy will be much easier to craft and should result in clearer, more concise, and effective policy and guidelines. Let me know what you think.

— Mike Cline (talk) 14:47, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

That was an observation and question I had yesterday, but it fits well into your more deterministic approach. --Mike Cline (talk) 20:39, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

LLC in title

Should article titles exclude "LLC" from the end (eg, Marquette Rail, LLC vs Marquette Rail? C628 (talk) 02:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, "LLC" and similar suffixes should be omitted from article titles unless they provide disambiguation. The relevant guideline is Wikipedia:Naming conventions (companies):

The legal status suffix of a company (such as Inc., plc, LLC, and those in other languages such as GmbH, AG, and S.A.) is not normally included in the article title (for example, Microsoft Corporation, Nestlé S.A., Aflac Incorporated, and Deutsche Post AG). When disambiguation is needed, the legal status, an appended "(company)", or other suffix can be used to disambiguate (for example, Oracle Corporation, Borders Group, Be Inc., and Illumina (company)).

—David Levy 02:33, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. C628 (talk) 21:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Whither Recognizability?

Now that we have a productive discussion going on wording details, it would be good to have a shared understanding of how to interpret the change that Born2cycle got put into the "recognizability" provision, following Kotniski's earlier change (as described in User:Dicklyon/Whither Recognizability?#Aug. 2010 – planting the seeds of dissent)

My poll #Poll to plan for future discussion on Recognizability found zero support for the proposed extreme interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C wording as "recognizability of a title to readers who are not already familiar with the topic is not a goal, and should not be used as an argument in favor of a title." So I noted that "my main objection has been been considerably reduced by the unanimous rejection of that interpretation by those who responded to my poll."

However, in his victory speech, Born2cycle alleges that

... your poll rejected no interpretion ... In fact, since it's consistent with the preferred wording, there is evidence that it's supporting (not as wording for the policy, but as correct interpretation of what happens). Not to mention that the words used by many participating in the discussions since Dec 21, including Greg's poll, indicated preference for the Kotniski wording because of agreement with the interpretation you claim was rejected in your poll.

I believe he may be partly right that some do support his interpretation, but they just didn't want to support that alternative in my poll. My poll, in attempting to get an assessment of who stands where on the issue, came up wanting; perhaps my additional interpretational phrase "A title is judged to be recognizable if it is the most commonly used term for a topic in reliable sources" was too distracting or was what some rejected. So maybe we can just go more directly and ask, who supports, and who rejects, B2C's interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C recognizability wording that was recently inserted into policy after the page was unlocked? Feel free to answer or discuss in any way you please, or to ignore if you think the wording speaks for itself and need not have a shared interpretation associated with it. Dicklyon (talk) 22:17, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Your comments here is why I wanted that poll or yours hatted. Please stop it. IMHO this section just as pointy and disruptive as your poll. I suggest that it is hatted as it does nothing to help with the constructive engagement that has been taking place on this talk page since the page was unblocked. -- PBS (talk) 22:16, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying you wanted the poll closed because you were afraid that it would show that nobody supported B2C's interpretation? Or what? Why do you think it's disruptive to try to find out what the opinions and interpretations of other editors are? Dicklyon (talk) 23:31, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

The poll that I suggested hatted, forced people to reiterate the position they had expressed less that a month before for fear that you would use non participation as a justification for saying that consensus had changed. The net result was lots and lots of text that did not bring clarity. As you did not simply list the version of wording unanimously supported in the previous poll people were forced to use your option four with qualifications. The qualifications meant that it ballooned up into huge amounts of text with little clarity.

The whole point of that poll was to see how supporters of the previous wording would divide on how they interpreted it. My objection to B2C's policy mod has always been not about the wording, but about the intent. You have a better way to get at that? Dicklyon (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion the way you have constructed the first paragraph this section is based on an assumption of bad faith ny B2C and as such it is not going to advance development of this policy page. You are asking "So maybe we can just go more directly and ask, who supports, and who rejects, B2C's interpretation of the Kotniski/B2C recognizability wording that was recently inserted into policy after the page was unlocked?" Why his opinion and not any of the other 16 who participated in Greg's poll under scrutiny? As I said this section like the poll should in my opinion be hatted as it take up lots of space and does not help develop consensus. Now if you want to reply to this comment, to get in the last word then please do, as I will not reply if you do and I hope no one else will. -- PBS (talk) 03:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

B2C was the only one who rejected the result of my poll. He's the only one who has asserted the extreme interpretation. That's why I wanted to know if anyone else sees it his way. Apparently not. Dicklyon (talk) 06:40, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I didn't reject the results of your poll. I rejected the conclusion you drew, and explained why, from the results of your poll. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:22, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, then I should have said "B2C was the only one who rejected my interpretation of my poll. He's the only one who has asserted the extreme interpretation."

So I'm asking if anyone agrees with you on either part of that, or would like to provide an alternative interpretation of the results of the poll. Dicklyon (talk) 18:56, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Article title decision practice RFC draft

I am very pleased with the discussions above that we are actually developing some productive consensus around some key points of contention. We have a long way to go but are headed in the right direction. Many of the regulars here and on other policy/guideline talk pages have always claimed that policy/guidelines should document and follow practice, not necessarily dictate it. To that end, I think an important step in our journey to better WP titling policy, is to actually assess what the wider community believes the practice is. To that end, I have drafted an RFC as a subpage of this one: RFC-Article title decision practice. Its purpose is not to derail or stifle the discussions above, but instead add some additional data that we can use as we improve this policy on WP titles. It is not yet a live RFC, but my intent is to make it live within the next 24 hours. Additionally I intend to advertise it at Centralized Discussions, all projects that have naming conventions, MOS talk pages, RM and New Page Patrol talk pages. I hope it generates a lot of response from a wide range of editors. In the short term however, I would appreciate anyone participating here to provide any feedback that might improve the RFC wording. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 19:13, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

In some cases I think SPECIAL:RANDOM is a better tool for determining actual practice than is polling some self-selected subset of the community. For example, on the recognizability question (recognizable to whom? Those familiar or others too?) if you click on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few dozen times, you will find articles that fall into the following categories:

1. The topic of the article is probably recognizable only to those familiar with the topic from the title.
2. The topic of the article is probably recognizable not only to those familiar with the topic from the title.

2a) The reason for the broader recognizability is a need to disambiguate this title from other uses of that title in WP (that is, extra precision in the title, which makes it recognizable to those not familiar with the topic, is to disambiguate from another use in WP).

2b) The reason for the broader recognizability is not a need to disambiguate this title from other uses.

The idea is to click on SPECIAL:RANDOM a few dozen times, and categorize each title into 1, 2a or 2b. I suggest the results will always be dominated by 1 and 2a, and titles that fall into category 2b will be relatively rare. If so, this would be strong objective evidence supporting the claim that the current "Kotniski" wording better reflects actual practice than does the May 2011 wording.

Similar tests based on RANDOM could be devised for other questions. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:18, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

[EDIT CLASH] People only claim that "policy/guidelines should document and follow practice" if the policy/guidelines follow what they think is best. I can list lots of such cases, but taking one I was not involved in which demonstrates it well: The MOS debate on linking dates. Nearly every article had linked dates (because the MOS advised it). Then some editors got together and decided it was a bad idea, and hay presto, today because of the change in guidance dates are no longer linked in most articles. policy/guidelines are part of a feedback loop and often "practice" goes back to someone (or a group) decide to add something and then argue for its retention, justifying it that there is no consensus to remove it. Because many editors (particularly those who do not edit policy/guidelines and their talk pages) do not realise how they work, they rely on them and so what they say tends to be what becomes practice. This is very much reinforced when bots or AWB scripts start to make hundreds/thousands of changes based on a rule in the MOS. -- PBS (talk) 22:33, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

That might be an indication that substantive changes to guidelines should only be implemented after demonstrating that there is broad community support. older ≠ wiser 22:57, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

But it works the other way as well we have all sorts of restrictions on how things should be done and often they are based on an edit placed into a guideline years ago with next to no support. But try to remove it and people who approve of the restriction argue that there is no consensus for removal, even if only less than a handful are involved in the discussion. -- PBS (talk) 03:25, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Quite right, with this page being a prime example of the extraordinary turmoil even relatively minor changes can cause. I've little expectation that it would actually happen, but I've suggested before that the MOS (and by extension other non-foundation policies and guidelines) should be stripped down to only those elements that have demonstrable consensus. The rest can go into essays on "how I think everyone should write". older ≠ wiser 03:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

PBS, my favorite example of that is the bot-generated renaming of all U.S. cities into the City, State format, whether they needed disambiguation or not. It's true that in certain cases like that so-called actual practice does not necessarily reflect broad community consensus but, rather, it's the result of work by bots launched by a small group of editors with a strong view, but, I believe those are relatively rare exceptions. Most actual practice is the actual result of individual editors doing consensus-supported stuff, and when it's a broadly accepted practice affecting most articles, it can be reliably observed in any sufficiently large sample of RANDOM results. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting stuff, but I want to know what the general editor corps thinks our title decision policy is. There are 136,000 active editors that aren't bots or special randoms. Bots and Special Random don't create new articles or participate in RM discussions, and even if they did, I don't really care what their opinion might be. Can a bot have an opinion? --Mike Cline (talk) 23:55, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

I strongly recommend we slow down here and get the current language in better shape before we take anything to the wider community. The goals are a mess right now. If everyone here agrees to go with Born2Cycle's proposal above, I'd like to see that instituted and then take this RfC live. Otherwise I think we'll have a lot of distracting nitpicking about grammar and such rather than the discussion we are looking for. Jojalozzo 00:11, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Mike, Facts > Opinions. I'm not knocking the RFC idea; just saying you can look at the raw objective data too to answer many questions about actual practice, which is arguably more reliable than opinion. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Jojalozzo, I don't think I am asking anyone to interpret existing language or future language. The RFC isn't about the current language, it is about what the average editor thinks our titling policy is. Its the average editor who creates new articles and on par participates in RM discussions. I also assume its the average editor who makes unilateral page moves not requiring admin intervention. I just what to know what they think. If that informs our discussions, wouldn't that be a good thing.? --Mike Cline (talk) 00:40, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think we can expect people to check out current titling guidelines while they are considering their responses and to inform their responses. I have been advocating for a clean up without substantive changes so we can have the kinds of discussion you wish to initiate with a decent version of the current guidelines. IMO, we're rushing into an RfC with our pants down. However, I can see how the poor condition of the guidelines could motivate participation in the RfC, so let's proceed with clean up discussion and RfC in parallel. Jojalozzo 02:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I am a little concerned about the way the questions are presented as a sort of multiple choice, where it is obvious what is the "right" answer. The problem is that the "right answer" covers the "normal" case ; so one's first thought, for each question, is to select the answer "The choices highlighted above faithfuly reflect the title decision practice of WP". There are a number of problems with this, for instance

• The normal case is often obvious, and guidelines are superfluous
• What is thought of as the normal case might actually be typical of only a minority of articles.

Just to take the first question as an example:

• "Sources (What is the source of the title wording?)
  • As supported by reliable English language secondary sources
  • As contained in Original Research, primary sources, etc.
  • Pure fantasy, made up names, fanciful constructions, et. al."

My first thought would probably be to answer: Yes, the highlighted choice is how it works. My second thought, however, is to remember that I often work on topics related to non-English-speaking countries and have encountered many discussions about locations, people etc. that are notable but where there are insufficient English language sources to establish an English name. Actual practice seems to be to not follow the highlighted choice when it clashes with other considerations (which may not be listed here). It would not surprise me if I heard that the majority of the people and places in Wikipedia do not have an established English name ("established" in the sense used by lexicographers/linguists), except insofar as normal practice in the English language community is to treat foreign names as accepted English names. In other words, de facto, non-English sources are the real basis for the article title. This is not normally a problem, since the foreign name is usually indistinguishable from an English name. It becomes a problem when the foreign name contains diacritics, for instance. I do not want to discuss particular examples, but rather the general problem of getting correct answers to the questions we (and the readers) think we are asking. I am not sure how this is best addressed, but asking about specific naming disputes might help, since it is during disputes that it becomes clear what the guidlines actually say, how different people interpret them, what contradictions there are and what inadequacies they exhibit. --Boson (talk) 01:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Boson, you raise valid issues. However, I am asking these questions with 3.7M existing articles in mind and a potential for ~2-5M new articles in the next 10 years. Does the occasional article title derive from purely OR or a primary source, of course. But general practice would suggest that we demand article titles to be supported by reliable secondary sources. I've personally evaluated, closed or relisted RMs for the last five months. I've also created 475+ new articles. I think I understand what actually drives article title decisions. The questions are formulated from that experience. Whether they are the right questions or not is a legitimate issue. Whether or not they reflect every possible exception to 3.7M examples is not. --Mike Cline (talk) 01:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

On these lines, offering only a single practice in each category obscures actual practice, especially where more than on practice occurs with similar frequency. There is also a lot of leading in this RfC, where the highlighted choices are explained as beneficial, more encyclopedic, less encyclopedic and even said to be common practice. It has a rigged feel that many may find objectionable. I recommend a more neutral approach throughout. Jojalozzo 02:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

While I don't think it is intentional, the poll currently seems designed to elicit a confirmation bias. I'm not sure what can be done to remedy the situation, but I don't see that the poll as currently framed would produce credible results. older ≠ wiser 03:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I too found it impossible to answer due to the mixture of practices. Not that it feels rigged, but that it's hard to answer, and therefore will be hard to analyze the results. Actual practice includes a lot of newly-named articles, never reviewed (that's mostly what you'll see with RANDOM, I think). It might be better to look at practice as reflected in RM results; how are such thoughtful discussions typically concluded? Of course, even there practices will vary. At some point, we want to offer guidance on the "right" way to decide such things, not just represent the mixture of what's done. In the current survey, it's likely that votes for the bold items will mean this is what someone likes when it's done, and votes for other options will be indications of dissatisfaction with those. Dicklyon (talk) 03:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Since you ask for only one response, don't you need a fourth response which would combine the second and third, i.e. that "Some (but not all) of the highlighted choices above faithfully reflect the title decision practice of WP and there are one or more important title decision practices missing"? Jojalozzo 02:19, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Excellent point. I will ad a fouth option before i go live. Thanks --Mike Cline (talk) 03:31, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm not going to be able to say much because of my RL work stress-out at the moment. But in relation to this edit, could I make a few points?

• "overly long"—Not a nice wording. Can it be "unnecessarily long"? But then, if a title is concise, surely it's not unnecessarily or overly long ... so why are both phrases necessary? This is wobbly in terms of language logic.
• "Titles follow the same pattern as those of similar articles."—OK, but engvar currently allows US spelling for one article and UK spelling for a sibling article in some cases. Is this going to work?
• In terms of expression, "Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously." would be better as "Titles are usually only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of an article unambiguously." Does the shorter version lose anything?
• "Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with as well as those that editors naturally use to link from other articles". Better as ""Titles are those that readers are likely to look for or search with, and that editors naturally use to link from other articles." I presume this interfaces with redirects, but they're not mentioned. I'm a bit confused. An American reader will look for a title using US spelling, which may be a redirect, but not the (real) title. "... those that editors naturally use to link from other articles."—unsure what the purpose of this clause is; I don't understand what it means (and does it skirt around the piping of links?). Are (i) what readers are likely to look for or search with, and (ii) what editors naturally use to link from other articles ever different?
• "Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English." To clarify my understanding, could someone give an example of a case where a title is not what the subject is actually called in English? (I note the "usually", which seems to allow for exceptions, and the use of "actually", which often bothers me in text—but it might work here ... unsure).

Sorry if I'm being daft in not understanding a few points. Tony (talk) 16:00, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I appreciate everyone’s input above and am confident the RFC will generate the results I want (and I think results that we will find useful moving forward). Many of the comments above are typical when we think tactically instead of strategically. That’s OK because it’s normal. A couple of the comments impressed me in different ways.

• However, I can see how the poor condition of the guidelines could motivate participation in the RfC, so let's proceed with clean up discussion and RfC in parallel. Jojalozzo 02:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC
  • “In parallel” is thinking strategically and will result in faster, more effective change. By contrast, acting serially, one careful step at a time, significantly reduces the probability of success.
• While I don't think it is intentional, the poll currently seems designed to elicit a confirmation bias. I'm not sure what can be done to remedy the situation, but I don't see that the poll as currently framed would produce credible results. older ≠ wiser 03:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)
• Not that it feels rigged, but that it's hard to answer, and therefore will be hard to analyze the results. Actual practice includes a lot of newly-named articles, never reviewed …” (Dicklyon (talk) 03:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

• • Thinking and acting strategically requires everyone to understand (and essentially accept) the goals. Goals have to be clear, concise, measurable and desirable. One of the methods to help achieve that in what I call FastTime is open planning—involving as many brains as possible in developing and aligning to solutions. That’s what this RFC is, one big open planning session where anyone who chooses to provide an input can. Their inputs won’t be judged or discarded and everyone’s should be respected. We won’t know whether or not the resulting input will be hard to analyze or even useful or not because in the world of Strategic thinking, we never pre-judge the results, because the results are always credible in some form or another. I was looking for a concise external source to convey this open planning idea and found this: [25]. Read the paragraphs labeled Transparent operations.

Again, thanks for the input. Perfect is the enemy of good. The RFC may not be structured perfectly, but it should provide us some interesting viewpoints. It will go live later this morning. I look forward to everyone’s input. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Why "to someone familiar with the topic"?

Forgive me if I am making everyone repeat themselves, but I am still unclear as to why we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic". I am not challenging the statement or saying that we should change it... but I would like to better understand the intent behind the restriction. Blueboar (talk) 16:57, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think ultimately it comes down to concision and practicalities in the naming process. By using the name of the topic that those familiar with the topic would recognize it by reduces the choices of what to use for the title down to one (or close to it) for the vast majority of articles. If we didn't limit it to that, the choices would be expanded almost without limit. That would mean even more time and resources spent arguing about titles, if you can imagine that.

That's why we have The Running Man and not The Running Man (book) or The Running Man (Stephen King novel) or The Running Man (Stephen King science fiction novel) or The Running Man (1982 Stephen King science fiction novel first published under the pseudonym Richard Backman), etc., etc. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:32, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I should add that while there is no goal to make our titles recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topics, there is also no explicit goal to avoid making titles recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topics. That is, if additional precision is necessary to disambiguate from other uses in WP -- the only reason we add additional precision to titles -- and that happens to make the title recognizable even to people unfamiliar with the topic (e.g., people unfamiliar with the film Paris, Texas would recognize it as being a film from its title, Paris, Texas (film)), that's perfectly acceptable. We just don't specifically go for that effect. Making a title recognizable to those unfamiliar with a topic is never a goal in deciding titles.

Because of disambiguation requirements, some of our articles, like Paris, Texas (film), do end up with titles that are recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and that might give some the impression that we do that purposefully, but we don't. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:42, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that that is a fair statement of B2C's purpose in supporting this wording; he has been consistent in wanting to use the "recognizability" provision as a tool for getting less parenthetical or disambiguation information, which would indeed often be helpful in making titles recognizable to more people. But historically, this is nothing to do with what the recognizability provision was about. It's just his way of limiting its use. To me, it's orthogonal; this is not the place to have the parenthetical debate (a debate in which I have not taken a position, contrary to his frequent claims). Dicklyon (talk) 18:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

B2C's example seems to be more an issue of "Precision" than "Recognizability"... after all, all of the potential titles he lists would be recognizable to someone familiar with the topic of Steven King's book. However, there is actually a different problem with recognizability in his example... is the title recognizable to someone who is not "familiar with the topic"?... or recognizable to someone "familiar" with a different topic? If you are "familiar" with hip-hop and not "familiar" with the works of Steven King, then "The Running Man" would be the the most "recognizable" title for The Running Man (dance). Indeed, I could easily see someone arguing that the undisambiguated title "The Running Man" should point to the article on the dance and not to the article on the book, as more people are likely to recognize the title as a reference to the dance than as a reference to the book. (Note - I am not saying the argument is valid... I have no idea whether the dance is more recognizable than the book or vise versa ... I am simply noting that I could see someone familiar with the dance and not the book making the argument).

Actually, I think this is a case where the unadorned - undisambiguated title should point directly to the dab page... as the title refers to several things that don't have a common connection... ie there is no "main article" that is the logical "recognizable" recipient of the unadorned title.

Can we come up with an example of a situation that would fit the "familiar with the topic" restriction that does not involve disambiguation? Blueboar (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Agreed. I got an edit conflict when extending my comments (below now). Dicklyon (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec) On the other hand, The Running Man is not a good example of his point, standing as it does alongside The Running Man (film) and the various other books, stories, TV series, etc. listed at Running Man. How is someone going to recognize it as the book when it's so ambiguous? This is actually a PRIMARYNAME question, not a disambiguation, precision, or recognizability question; he often confuses these. Dicklyon (talk) 19:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

(ec)Dick, the recognizability provision was always implicitly about making our titles recognizable to those "familiar with" (or likely to be seeking) the topic of the article. This is obvious from any objective observation of a few dozen randomly selected articles.

The Kotniski caveat which Blueboar is asking about simply made this explicit to prevent anyone from believing that we strive to make our titles recognizable to anyone other than those who are familiar, and to prevent anyone from arguing for unnecessary precision in titles on the basis of recognizability. For example, without the Kotniski explicit caveat, one might argue that a given title is "too vague" and so needs more precision to be more recognizable [26]. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

B2C, where is the evidence that your interpretation was ever "implicit" in the recognizability provision? And I'm quite certain that Kotniski never gave his reason for the change as making it explicit, since he never commented on the change at all, other than to say that he was offering it for consideration and that it was OK to revert it, and then to say that it's not OK to revert it after PBS reverted it a couple of times (see). Dicklyon (talk) 19:36, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Again: " This is obvious from any objective observation of a few dozen randomly selected articles." That's the evidence supporting the fact that that is how recognizability is interpreted and applied in actual practice. Kotniski's wording simply reflects that, which he might not have said at the time of making the edit, but certainly had many, many times since. So have many others. I don't understand why you keep asking this. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I keep asking because I don't believe your unsupported assertions; your inference of policy intent from random article titles is nonsense, in my estimation; I've pointed out before that many article titles are recognizable to many more people than are familiar with the topic, and I argue that's not a bad thing. If Kotniski has said what you claim, show us where; or others (besides yourself); I have showed you that Kotniski said nothing around the time that he made the change. Dicklyon (talk) 19:49, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see why it matters to you whether Kotniski said it at the time of the edit or any other time. If you can convince me that it really matters to you, then I'll take the time to dig up those statements.

I've acknowledged repeatedly, including just above, that many titles are recognizable to more people than are familiar with the topic. I've never argued such broad recognizability in a title is a bad thing. I've only argued that it is a common side effect of disambiguation, not a goal in and of itself.

As to policy intent, policy intent is largely about reflecting accepted practice. We can "reverse engineer" what actual practice is by looking at how articles are named, and I suggest looking at random ones only to be objective (in particular to avoid cherry picking). Of course this only works if you look at sufficient numbers (a few dozen).

I've never said that we should look at articles (randomly or otherwise) to ascertain policy intent. I've said that we should look at articles to ascertain actual practice, in order to help determine what policy should say.

Put another way, how many articles can you find with titles that make them recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and are not so because of additional descriptive information added to the title for the purpose of disambiguation? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:14, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

No, it doesn't really matter to me what Kotniski said. I just wondered if there was any basis for your implicitly claim, or your "The Kotniski caveat which Blueboar is asking about simply made this explicit to prevent anyone from believing..." claim, both of which you have so far failed to support. Dicklyon (talk) 07:12, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm also wondering if anyone else besides you believes or supports the theory you just described in those paragraphs. If so, maybe they can help try to explain it to me. Dicklyon (talk) 07:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I did as you suggested, looking at random articles, for ones "with titles that make them recognizable to those unfamiliar with the topic, and are not so because of additional descriptive information added to the title for the purpose of disambiguation". I immediately found Cactus longhorn beetle; is that what you're talking about? It's recognizable as a beetle, and a particular kind at that; the info that makes it recognizable is just its name, not anything extra. But I don't understand the point of the question. Maybe this is isn't what you meant. Then I found Chris Soumokil, recognizable as the name of a person; then several more obvious person names. Then Sanafir Island, recognizable as probably an island. Then International Journal of Injury Control and Safety Promotion, recognizable as a journal (might not have been recognizable under a short name like Injury Control and Safety Promotion if it happens to be called that). Dicklyon (talk) 07:28, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Guys, you're missing my point. Forget the other uses of "The Running Man" (which indeed make it about WP:D and primary topic). Even if the King novel was the only use of "The Running Man", without the Kotniski caveat in the recognizability criterion, one could argue that "The Running Man" is a "generic sounding" phrase that is "too vague", and needs to be made more descriptive for recognizability.

That's why "we are restricting article titles to those that are recognizable to "those familiar with the topic"" (though titles that needs to be disambiguated from other actual uses in WP may inadvertently end up being more recognizable). --Born2cycle (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok... but I am still not understanding why we wouldn't strive to make our titles recognizable to everyone? Sure you can over do precision or disambiguation... but I don't see what that has to do with the concept of whether the title is recognizable? Both "The Running Man" and "The Running Man (book)" seem equally recognizable to me.Blueboar (talk) 19:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

To me, the concept of Recognizability has more to do with choosing between Samuel Clemens vs Mark Twain. We go with Mark Twain because more people are likely to recognize this particular author's pen name than to recognize his real name. It is more likely that people will search for the article using his pen name. That's what recognizability is about. No? Blueboar (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

A better example would be The Control of Nature, which I recognize as one of my favorites, and which doesn't have a corresponding film or anything like that. Dicklyon (talk) 19:41, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar, what an opening. We don't use Mark Twain instead of Samuel Clemens because more people are likely to .... We use it because it is an 80:1 advantage common name. Pretty simple, the reason people recognize it is that it is vastly more common than the alternative. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:51, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Um... That is not backed up by a look through the archives of that article... there is a lot of discussion about which name is more familiar or recognizable. not much discussion about which is more common. (in fact, I think the article choice took place before WP:COMMONNAME became policy. In any case, I think you are confusing the method for the concept. The goal is to choose the most recognizable name... looking for the most commonly used name is the method by which we achieve that goal(ie the method by which we determine what is recognizable.) Blueboar (talk) 04:32, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Blueboar, no, they are not equally recognizable. The Running Man (book) is recognizable as an article about a book to anyone; The Running Man is not recognizable to be about that to anyone unfamiliar with the book. So, The Running Man (book) is more recognizable, but, unless (book) is needs for disambiguation, we prefer the shorter title. In terms of recognizability, we only are concerned with making sure people familiar with the topic will recognize what it is. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:53, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think another example would help bring clarification. To a certain degree it depends on how some one is searching for information. We can not anticipate why someone is looking for a subject. Take for example the battle of Battle of Quatre Bras. If someone is looking for battles in 1815 one might be tempted to add Battle of Quatre Bras , 1815, if someone is looking for the battles that Wellington commanded the Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815, Duke of Wellington --Oh but that is descriptive! So make it non POV-- Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815, Duke of Wellington, Prince of Maoscow Who was the prince of Moscow? --lets not get started on that but we could end up with thier name and full titles in there-- But someone else might be looking for the battle under "What was the battle before Waterloo?" Battle of Quatre Bras (1815, Duke of Wellington, Prince of Moscow, the British/Dutch battle before Waterloo, but not the only French battle before Waterloo. The point is that we can not anticipate all the possible ways someone unfamiliar with the topic will be searching for it and might describe it, so we assume that someone is looking for it because they are reading something (or watching a film, news, etc) that is likely to be using the same title as Wikipedia uses, ie the name is based on "someone familiar", because even if the person searching is not familiar, it is not unreasonable to assume that they are looking for it, because they have had contact with a source where the author is familiar. However we do not assume that they are trying to find the article having read a research paper on the subject, as that research paper, written for other experts, might use a different name from that used in other more general sources written for the man on the Clapham omnibus (and it is not an unreasonable assumption for the editors of Wikipeidia to make that someone with access to and reading the research paper would usually know that).-- PBS (talk) 23:24, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I can't see how ratholing like that clarifies anything. Battle of Quatre Bras is recognizable as a battle, even though I've never heard of it. The Running Man, on the other hand, I would not recognize as anything, and if I was familiar with the book and the film I still wouldn't have much clue. The levels of ambiguity and recognizability are far different. Dicklyon (talk) 00:25, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Apparently the ambiguity of The Running Man is too distracting. How about Gerald's Game? I presume you also don't recognize it as anything. Yet it fully meets the recognizability criterion when the criterion includes the Kotniski caveat. But without the Kotniski caveat, the argument can be made that the title would meet the recognizability criterion better if we put more description in the title. Yet we don't do that, which is why the recognizability criterion is more accurate with respect to actual practice with the Kotniski caveat. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:04, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Alternatively, one could recognize that other considerations, such as conciseness, also have a role in determining practice, and are more likely to be the explanation for such cases. There's no real need to hobble recognizability. Your insistence on tying it the parethetical/disambiguation issue is tiresome. Dicklyon (talk) 04:56, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Dick, the recognizability criterion is no more "hobbled" by the Kotniski caveat (to those familiar) than the precision criterion is "hobbled" by the "no more precise than than necessary to disambiguate from other uses in Wikipedia" caveat. In both cases it's about clarification not hobbling.

We all recognize that we are supposed to balance all of this criteria when deciding a title, but it provides better guidance on how to do that with such clarification than without. Otherwise, in a situation in which we're trying to decide between titles A and B, where criterion #1 favors A and criterion #2 favors B, those favoring A will simply cite #1 and those favoring B will cite #2 and we just have a pissing match. Isn't that what we're trying to avoid? Why not add clarification which is consistent with actual practice where appropriate?

Now, some clarification is obviously implied and doesn't need to be stated. We could clarify conciseness by saying "not so concise as to make the title obscure", but everyone knows that. I can't even imagine anyone seriously arguing for a title so concise that it is obscure. But we know people will argue for making titles more descriptive to make them more recognizable, even when the current title is already recognizable to people familiar with the topic. You keep saying there is no reason to "hobble" recognizabilty by "tying it the parethetical/disambiguation issue ", but the very situation that prompted me to notice that the Kotniski caveat was removed shows that we need this clarification in there. And consensus is quite clear on this point, so your insistence to the contrary is what is tiring here. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:58, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Hows abouts

• Try to someone who is likely to be searching for that title or topic...

For instance (1) NewbyG ( talk) 18:37, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

That probably works too. Will think about it. --Born2cycle (talk) 18:44, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

"for that title or topic" would make more sense as "for that topic", since any title will be recognizable to someone searching for that title. Dicklyon (talk) 18:50, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

For literate, educated people, we aren't using our language very well here. First, I have no clue as to what "Familar with the topic" means let alone trying to use the phrase to justify disambiguation or style guidelines. I was working through RMs this morning. Prior to reading the article Macanese pataca I was completely unfamilar (had no clue) with the term, now I consider myself casually familar with the term and would recognize it if encountered elsewhere. So does familar with as used, imply familarity with the subject before ever reading the WP article? Is there any degree of familarity required? A banker from Macau would be intimately familar with Macanese pataca whereas I, after reading the article have a casual level of familarity. There's a lot of ambiguity associated with "familar with". Even if we defined it unambiguously, I would question whether or not it was the best language to achieve the goal of a reasonable balance between ambiguity, style and conciseness in our titles. I can think of a lot more straightforward language in that regard. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:02, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I think shifting focus to someone looking for the topic rather than on expertise or familiarity helps. Mike, in your example, some might want the title to be something like Macanese pataca (currency) as an indication to the unfamiliar what the subject is about. older ≠ wiser 19:17, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Before all the debates, I understood "Recognizability" to mean two things... 1) when choosing between a potential title that lots of people will recognize and a potential title that few people will recognize ... go with the one that is more recognizable. (Choose "Lion" over "Panthera Leo" for example) 2) when choosing between two relatively recognizable titles, go with the one that the most number of en.wikipedia readers will recognize (ie English as first language users). Perhaps we need to get back to this basic concept. Blueboar (talk) 19:21, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. It even explicitly said "Article naming should prefer what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity" for many years. Dicklyon (talk) 19:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Without belaboring this (or getting into the good, better and best title discussion), the moderate level of disambiguation you added to the title eliminates the need to even worry about familiarity or ambiguity of strange terms like this. In this case Macanese isn't the most common term, reliable sources say Macao pataca (currency) would be the correct name from a common name standpoint but it faithfully represents the content of the article, is not excessively disambiguated but enough to know its article about currency, and it meets our style standards--a nice balance of all four elements of a title--sourcing, type of name, ambiguity and style. No one "familar with" or no one "searching for" could disagree with that, but we didn't need that to get there. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:33, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Dicklyon's wording above is much more straight forward and would be improved by this slight rewording: "Article titles should reflect what the greatest number of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable level of ambiguity". Puts the burden squarely on the shoulders of the title, not millions of diverse readers. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

I am worried that this will lead to all articles carrying a disambiguation. Which is certainly against current practice. For example, in Category:Russian_writers, 99% of the names are not familiar to English speakers and would get "(writer)" appended to it. --Enric Naval (talk) 20:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

We do box ourselves into uncomfortable corners. It is difficult, but we have to find wording that actually means something and gives us the strategic results we want. Your concerns are valid. But if I was an average English speaking reader and went to Category:Soviet emigrants to the United States instead of Category:Russian writers, wouldn't it be useful to have that (writer) disambiguation so I could separate the actors from the writers from the hockey players, etc. without having to look at every article? Unfortunately we know way too little about what our readers really want. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:43, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

That line of thinking is reasonable, only if you also consider London (United Kingdom) as the correct title by such reasoning. Otherwise where and how do you draw the line when a title is not unambiguous. older ≠ wiser 22:13, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. And this has been pointed out over and over repeatedly on this talk page. No one has ever argued that more description to a title -- taken in isolation -- is a bad thing. The problem is... well, we're going around in circles. See my first posts to the section above where Blueboar asked his question. And yet people keep asking things like "isn't more description/disambiguation useful"?, without addressing those points. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Well you guys do all seem to be getting on much better. Can I pose a question. When you're talking here about being recognizable, are you all specifically referring to the situation where I search for Steppenwolf, and Acmesearch serves me articles about the Herman Hesse book, the band, the Hawkwind track ("my eyes are convex lenses of ebony, embedded in amber"), the theatre company that Gary Sinise co-founded, the film, the jazz album, etc, and I'm trying to work out which one I want. Or the situation where I'm using the Wikipedia search engine. I ask this because if I use Google/Bing/Yahoo, I get (in sequence) the wikipedia article on the band, the wikipedia article on the novel, the band website, the theatre company website, the band on YouTube (Google only), the film on IMDB, and the band on Last FM. If I search on Wikipedia I get taken to the disambiguation page (incidentally, someone needs to fix most of the articles which hatnote to Steppenwolf (disambiguation) which is a redirect).

Google returns the disambiguation page at the bottom of page 2. Yahoo and Bing don't return it at all. I say this because if someone was trying to find out what the hell a Macanese pataca was, the Wikipedia article is top of the list on all the search engines, and if he puts it into the Wikipedia search, it'll take him straight to the article. I submit therefore that the problem might be better focussed on search optimisation than on whether once you get to the article you recognise what it says in the heading. Elen of the Roads (talk) 23:38, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

No, this isn't really about disambiguation. Hesperian 00:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

(after ec) A couple of observations. Much of the recent to-do was about, for instance, whether a particular title was recognizable when viewed in a category listing. SEO may ne worth considering, but that involves more than only the article title, some that editors can affect (such as the introductory lines which typically appear in search results) and some beyond our control (such as the algorithms used to rank results). Second, it is correct for the hatnotes to link through the redirect at Steppenwolf (disambiguation); see Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Links to disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 00:19, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

If it isn't about search optimisation, why is it important that the title is recognizable? I had no idea what a Macanese pataca was before I looked at the article. It didn't stop me looking at the article. If I come across a completely unfamiliar term, I stick it in a search engine and see what comes back. If I was looking for the currency of Macau, and searched for that phrase, I'd still get Macanese pataca returned as the top article. I'd still get it if I searched for Macau Pataca (and I'd get taken straight to the article if I used the Wikipedia search, because there is a redirect. I think that last line from Links to disambiguation pages ought to be engraved at the top of the whole article titles page "redirects are cheap and are basically transparent to the reader." So you could call the article Macanese pataca, Macau pataca, Macinese currency (pataca), Pataca (Macinese currency) or any combo, and I can still find it. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:22, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Elen, nice set up for a point I will continue to make over and over again. We have got to begin to focus on the bigger picture—the strategic goals of the WMF and WP. Those are clearly spelled out in Wikimedia Strategic Plan Summary and can be summarized succinctly as more content, better quality content, more diverse participation and diversity of content from demographics clearly under-represented in today’s editor corps. I would at least like everyone participating here to acknowledge that they’ve read these strategic goals. But more importantly, we need to begin to examine the role that a WP article title contributes to achievement of these goals. A WP article title is merely a small tactical piece of a much larger enterprise, and although tactics are important, they should always contribute to, not detract from achievement of strategic goals. The great majority of these discussions are about fine-tuning our tactics but without actually connecting the impact of those tactics to the strategy. We have to turn that around. We could have 3.7M perfect titles and 3.7M crappy articles. I think if we had a choice, and we do, we would much prefer 3.7M good articles and perfect titles don’t much matter. Folks, read the strategy and let’s starting connecting our tactics to the achievement of that strategy. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me to that document, Mike. Among the [[seven highest priorities for Improve Quality is: "Develop clear and concise quality labeling to support readers." Am I wrong to interpret "labeling" to include article titles? Jojalozzo 18:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

No you are not wrong. The reader experience is part and parcel of quality content. But my understanding of that element of quality is "quality [of the article] labeling" is that the WMF want to provide readers a better indication of the "quality" of each article--ie FA, GA, stub, etc. Of course the title is part of that. What's important here, and I am pleased that you read the strategy, is that we begin to connect our tactical choices about titles to achievement of the whole strategy. --Mike Cline (talk) 18:57, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

D'oh. That makes sense. [The rest of this is off topic a bit, so anyone who doesn't care about the strategic plan can stop here ] <rant>Unfortunately, it also means the plan has no tactical approach to improving the quality of content or titles beyond a program for expert assessment and review. While the plan calls for stabilizing the physical and organizational infrastructure and the addition of expert input, it does not mention shoring up the soft infrastructure that supports the editorial community. If the plan is executed as proposed we'll have a large influx of new editors many with marginal English language skills. These new editors will be unfamiliar with policy and guidelines and have difficulty comprehending them and the job of correcting and managing the results will primarily fall on the shoulders of the volunteer community (for a precursor see the [India Education Project]). Given our cowboy culture ("anybody can edit! cool! BRD forever! what policy? IGNORE ALL RULES!"), the lack of editor education and the ragged state of policy and guidelines, I think this is a recipe for massive upheaval, volunteer defection and overall project decline. In my view, it's a major oversight that support for, or at least coordination with, our editorial infrastructure (administration, policy, guidelines, education) is not included in the plan. I understand that the Wikimedia Foundation is separate from the editorial community and our infrastructure is our business, but most of us will have little time for adding to or improving content if WM implements this plan to create a great influx of new editors and we're not ready for it.</rant> Jojalozzo 21:17, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Yours is not the first rant about the things you talked about. Alot of those concerns (and many are serious) were raised during the development of the strategy last year (it was an open, consensus based process). But I think its tough to argue with the overall strategy--more content, better quality content and more diverse participation. They present very real challenges to the WP community. The sum of all knowledge doesn't end at ~3.7M articles and our current editor corps may be part of but won't be the entire volunteer editor corps of the future. But the way to succeed is to always connect the tactics to the strategy to ensure you are using your resources wisely and getting what you want. Challenging, yes. Essential, yes. Sun Tzu said it best. Strategy without tactics is a slow route to victory. But tactics without strategy is the noise before the defeat. I vote for victory. We are starting to focus on the right things about titles in this discussion. --Mike Cline (talk) 21:36, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

identify not define

Submitted for consideration:

Recognizability – A good title will identify the topic to someone familiar with it, but need not define or explain the topic to someone unfamiliar with it.

Hesperian 00:16, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I think this is on track but "identify to" is an awkward construct. There's also a temporary consensus to use present tense (which makes more sense in context) without the adjective. Perhaps: "A title allows someone familiar with the topic to identify it, but need not define or explain the topic to someone unfamiliar with it." Or, more my style, "A title allows someone familiar with the topic to identify it." Jojalozzo 03:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: clarifying PRECISION

The current situation

The Precision criterion is currently worded as follows:

• Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously.

Note that it links to the WP:PRECISION section which starts out with the following statement:

When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided.

Note that this clarifies what "unambiguously" means: to distinguish an article title from other uses of the topic name.

Note also that the first sentence of WP:D defines disambiguation in terms of usage within Wikipedia:

Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving the conflicts that arise when a single term is ambiguous—when it refers to more than one topic covered by Wikipedia articles.

Why is this a problem?

Now, anyone can follow this chain of statements to ascertain the intended meaning, but if you just look at the precision criterion in isolation, it could be misleading. In particular, one could interpret it to mean unambiguously with respect to all usage in English, not just within the context of WP titles.

What's the solution?

Because of the potential misunderstanding/misinterpretation of the current wording, I suggest that we tighten up the wording about precision to be consistent with the accepted definition of disambiguation within WP.

What's the specific proposal?

I propose the criterion be updated to say:

• Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identify the topic of the article unambiguously with respect to other Wikipedia titles.

And also the following clarification added at WP:PRECISION:

When additional precision is necessary to distinguish an article title from other title uses of the topic name within Wikipedia, over-precision should be avoided.

Thoughts? Comments? Any objections? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Re WP:PRECISION, I suggest:

When additional precision in the title is necessary to distinguish anone article title from others uses of the topic name, over-precision should be avoided.

I don't think we're trying to distinguish titles but using titles to distinguish articles. Jojalozzo 21:31, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I suppose a parallel approach can be used for the Precision goal:

• Precision – Titles usually use names and terms that are precise (see below), but only as precise as necessary to identifyfor readers to distinguish the topic of the article unambiguouslyfrom that of others.

I think it is clearer if we include "readers". Jojalozzo 21:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

At first I was going to say good point, but after further thought, I don't think that's right. We use extra precision to distinguish the titles to avoid clashes due to the technical limitation of not being able to have two articles with the same title. We don't do it to distinguish titles for readers. Encyclopedias without this technical limitation use the same title for different articles. For example, Britannica Online uses Mercury for all of the articles about the following uses of that name.

• Planet http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/375807/Mercury
• Space project http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/375884/Mercury
• Roman god http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/375807/Mercury

They do include the chemical symbol in parenthesis for the element, but they do that for all articles about the elements, including those that don't need disambiguation:

• The element mercury (Hg): http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/375837/mercury-Hg/
• The element einsteinium (Es): http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/181416/einsteinium-Es/

So if it wasn't for the wiki technical limitation, I don't think we'd disambiguate our titles either. I don't think disambiguation in titles is done for readers at all. --Born2cycle (talk) 22:10, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I should note that until this change of a few days ago the wording of the precision criteria at least referred to these two other sections, making it easier for others to connect the dots and make misinterpretation less likely. I don't think returning the "extra baggage" would be an improvement, but what I propose addresses a problem created by this removal. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:13, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't know the answer to this but it is a question I have: Why do we chose to use a word like Precision which is a science, engineering, and statistical concept (I looked that up on WP) to describe a characteristic (or desired outcome) of ambiguity, unambiguous, disambiguation etc. which are all terms about interpretation of language and have nothing what so ever to do with the statistical concept of precision. What is the advantage of that?--Mike Cline (talk) 22:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)