Talk:Ford

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Requested move 26 August 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) The editor whose username is Z0 10:18, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ford (disambiguation) → Ford – There is no clear primary topic here, Ford (crossing) is the original and traditional meaning of "Ford", there is also Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States and Henry Ford, the founder as well as places and a few other meanings. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:03, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. "Ford" is on every Ford vehicle around the world; as such, is highly visible and known to people who might look for it. 331dot (talk) 10:09, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And the crossing is also known by nearly everyone. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:10, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree with that, as the need to ford a river has diminished in the last 100-150 years as public infrastructure has developed. 331dot (talk) 10:14, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Around my neck of the woods (Australia), ask anybody what a ford is and they will say a car. Point to a shallow river and they will say its a river. The company has eclipsed the river crossing around here. Stepho talk 21:18, 26 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think either are overwhelmingly common and per the 2nd criteria it would be the crossing, adding in all the other uses, I think no primary topic would be a reasonable outcome here. Crouch, Swale (talk) 08:36, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per what Stepho wrote, but replace Australia with England. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 07:22, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
More page views for Gerald Ford than for the company; more for the company than for Henry Ford but it's close. Ford (crossing) and the places with this name are a long way behind. It's possible that people searching for just "Ford" are looking for the article about the company but I don't know this, it isn't always clear with surnames. Peter James (talk) 16:05, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I think the primary topic here is the motor company (by simple Google search and Google Books), and by page views ignoring surname-holders. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:58, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The primary topic here is the car company. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:41, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I was going to oppose but then did a page view count check as due diligence. Ford is currently a WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT to Ford Motor Company, as if the motor company is the primary topic. However, page view counts for the president, who is surely known and searched for as "Ford", are consistently higher than they are for the motor company. Considering a topic needs to be much more likely than any other to be sought with "Ford" to be the primary topic for "Ford", and we don't have strong evidence that any is, and the page view counts indicate the contrary, I think it's clear we don't have a primary topic and the dab page should be at Ford, per the nom. --В²C ☎ 21:20, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
And look at these views [[1]], though it doesn't show us necessarily what users searching for just "Ford" want. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:25, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per above Oppose arguments. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 10:48, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Ford's listed at Redirects for discussion

An editor has asked for a discussion to address the redirect Ford's. Please participate in the redirect discussion if you have not already done so. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 07:53, 28 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 25 August 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Consensus to move (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 02:09, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Ford (disambiguation) → Ford – No primary topic for "Ford" since the crossing has considrable long-term significance and there is also Gerald and Henry Ford as well as a large number of places and other uses. There was a clear consensus at Talk:Ford Motor Company#Requested move 15 August 2021 not to move the company to "Ford" partly due to ambiguity and partly due to common name and a reasonable consensus that the DAB should be at the base name but was probably not done per Wikipedia:Requested moves/Closing instructions#Moves of other pages and it was noted a separate RM would be needed. The company can be kept at the top along with the crossing like with Mercury along perhaps with Gerald and Henry. This issue has been debated for years but if the DAB is moved to the base name the issue should be resolved. The crossing is the origin of the surname and probably all or most of the other uses. There are also very often links intended for the crossing that point to Ford, see User:Certes/misdirected links. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:42, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support - per nom. This will greatly help us find, fix, and avoid bad internal wikilinks. -- Netoholic @ 21:10, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 14:45, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per detailed nomination, Netoholic and Ortizesp. The primary redirect to the Ford Motor Company is not intuitive and there is no need for appending "(disambiguation)" to the dab page's main header. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 23:25, 26 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. There should neither be a primary topic nor a primary redirect. As I was trying to basically state on the previous 15 August RM discussion, both the Ford Motor Company and Gerald Ford are comparable with respect to both long-term significance and usage. In fact the former US President has tended to generate more traffic and regular spikes within the past few years.[2] Zzyzx11 (talk) 00:00, 27 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom and Zzyzx11. LSGH (talk) (contributions) 04:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Ford Motor Company has been considered the primary topic for years, but if it is indeed the primary topic, its primacy seems rather weak. It appears that a not-insignificant number of editors don't expect to find the titles the way they are now, so making Ford the dab page should be an improvement for readers. --Sable232 (talk) 19:06, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note to closer, Talk:Ford has significant discussion on this issue so if this proposal is successful Talk:Ford should be relocated rather than deleted and replaced with this page, maybe Talk:Ford/Old? Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:10, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Oppose. I still haven't seen any evidence that readers typing bare "Ford" do not expect Ford Motor Company; I certainly would, as it's the worldwide, 100+ years old carmaker. The notable individuals named "Ford" (Henry Ford and Gerald Ford) are hardly ever referred to by the bare surname. That leaves Ford (crossing), arguably the original, but today barely relevant meaning. For my part, I can offer Pageviews [3] showing 422,000 views for the company, 23,000 for the crossing, and 2,900 for the surname @90 days. That's over 150:1 ratio. Moving this is a solution to a non-existing problem; in fact, it's creating a problem for the readers. No such user (talk) 08:23, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- P.S. another one: [4]. In August, 8190 users (over 4%) arrived to Ford Motor Company through redirect Ford. That's more views than Ford (crossing) had in total (7562) and way more than Ford (disambiguation) (793). I don't see any evidence that readers are landing on a wrong page. No such user (talk) 19:24, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- That's a ratio of more than 15:1 not 150! That number would only go down if we looked at other topics. Apple with 59,108 views is primary over Apple Inc. with 231,437[[5]] views which is given as an example at WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Even though I don't really agree with the fruit being primary, it should probably have no primary topic but the company gets nearly 4x the views and that's ignoring everything else. Surely when taking into account the crossing as well as the 2 surname holders (yes are PTMs but still) as well as everything else there's no primary topic for "Ford" so its safest to disambiguate. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:07, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per User:No such user. 162 etc. (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Many notable individuals including a US President, many places, many organisations... the DAB is still one of the longer ones despite surnames having been split off to a long surname page and to no fewer than three other DABs. No possibility of a primary topic by either usage or significance. Andrewa (talk) 15:48, 2 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The numbers don't lie. The car company is the primary topic for the term Ford, despite other uses of the term. -- Calidum 17:41, 4 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
- That's the might-is-right argument. Once one usage gets ahead of the others then it can squash the other uses like bugs? Stepho talk 02:27, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment @Crouch, Swale: you referred in your nom to User:Certes/misdirected links. Do you have any data or indicators of how frequently "Ford" wikilinks are mistargeted? One technique I use is to search for mainspace wikilinks, sorted by random and manually browse them looking for mistargeted links. I scrolled through a few pages of results and wasn't able to find any incorrect wikilinks. Colin M (talk) 20:04, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Certes: how many incorrect crossing links have you fixed? Edit summary search doesn't return that many but I'm pretty sure I've seen a lot more fixed. Crouch, Swale (talk) 20:11, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've only fixed the 60 links you listed, but GoingBatty monitors the page daily and may have fixed others. (It's one of the perennial errors listed in User:GoingBatty/Backlinks.) Certes (talk) 20:46, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Note that I only monitor links to the lowercase ford, since those most likely should be changed to ford (crossing). Looking at uppercase links, I changed 3 links to Ford Foundation, 1 to Ford of Europe, 1 to Ford of Britain, 1 to Ford Australia, 6 to Ford Focus, 1 to Ford Motorsport, 1 to Ford Mondeo, 2 to Ford BDA, 1 to Ford Torino, 1 to GT 350 Mustang, 1 to Ford Mondeo, 1 to Ford GAA V6 3.4, 5 to Ford V8, 1 to Ford Escort (Europe). @Certes: I suspect the link on List of banks in Norway is wrong, but don't know how to change it. GoingBatty (talk) 22:25, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I checked all lower-case ford links and did a one-time heuristic search for Ford links likely to be wrong, as described in User:Certes/misdirected links#Finding links (where Ford is the prime example of a frequently mislinked page.) The Norway link is FCE Bank plc, the European equivalent of Ford Motor Credit Company. It doesn't have an article, so Ford Motor Company may be the best target, unless it is part of Ford of Europe. I just found and fixed a few more strays, including this one – did you know that Native Americans drove Fords as early as 1836? Certes (talk) 23:21, 5 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, per nom. Additionally, as an resident of Ontario, Canada, the word Ford makes me think of Doug Ford, the premier of the province. Youngwii (talk) 19:15, 7 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. We have already established twice that the motor company is not the primary topic, so there is no excuse for this continuing primary redirect. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:16, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support - No primary topic between the motor company, the former US president, and the type of river crossing. HumanBodyPiloter5 (talk) 15:31, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I was unsure until I tried to mend the link from Headington School. I don't know whether the house is named for the same river crossing as its city, for an alumnus named Ford or to reward sponsorship by the motor company. Our readers may not know what the term means either. Certes (talk) 17:31, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per @No such user, the clear primary topic is the motor company. PhotographyEdits (talk) 18:52, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Since it has already been established at Talk:Ford Motor Company that there is no primary topic, any comment that claims the company is the primary topic is going against consensus. No primary topic = no primary redirect. It makes no sense whatsoever to decide the motor company is not the primary topic but retain the redirect there from Ford. That's not how we do things. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:01, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the logic, but have we really established that there is no PT? Talk:Ford Motor Company found that "Ford" is not the best title for the FMC article, but I don't see consensus as to whether "Ford" has a PT (so should remain a primary redirect) or not (so should house the dab). Like you, I support the latter, but others disagree. Certes (talk) 16:24, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The previous RM was clearly an attempt at a primary topic grab. Given that it failed, I think it's pretty clear that consensus has been established that it is not the primary topic and therefore should not have a primary redirect. Therefore the disambiguation page should be moved to the base name. Anything else is clearly against long-established Wikipedia practice. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:51, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are we discussing the same RM? Both the status quo ante and the proposal had FMC as the primary topic. No one tried to grab PT for any other topic, though several editors saw no PT, which is essentially the proposal we're debating in this RM. Certes (talk) 10:36, 14 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I just added Ford World Rally Team to Ford (disambiguation)#Ford Motor Company. In the context of the World Rally Championship, saying that someone like Petter Solberg raced for "Ford" is incomplete disambiguation when a more specific link to the Ford World Rally Team can be made. – wbm1058 (talk) 20:57, 13 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Wbm1058: Should we retarget Ford (vehicles) to List of Ford vehicles? Certes (talk) 19:06, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
That's reasonable. I have no objection. wbm1058 (talk) 19:30, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
On reflection, I'll leave any change to others: the actual use is in phrases like "300 Ford lorries" and "his 1976 Ford", and a list of (mostly unrelated) models doesn't seem a better target than the company. Certes (talk) 20:26, 15 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - The nomination claims that the clear consensus in the most recent move discussion at Talk:Ford_Motor_Company#Requested_move_15_August_2021 is evidence that this disambiguation page should be moved, but note that participation in that discussion was low as just a year earlier there was another discussion, found on Talk:Ford Motor Company/Archive 5 where the outcome was "no consensus". I, and I would imagine others, didn't bother participating in the new discussion since no new arguments were raised there, so there was no point. I feel the same about this request and the 2018 move discussion, both brought by the same nominator. No new arguments are being made here. The company is the clear primary topic in terms of usage (as evidenced by No Such User above). No evidence or argument which differs from the 2018 discussion in favour of the move has been presented, and I believe nothing has changed. A7V2 (talk) 06:21, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd note that in the 2020 RM you stated "Those who disagree that this is the primary topic should instead look to move the disambiguation page" which looks like what most wanted in the 2021 company RM so that's what this is now. Crouch, Swale (talk) 19:07, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I also stated that I agreed with the existing consensus that Ford (Motor Company) is the primary topic for Ford so what is your point? Of course consensus can change (and perhaps it has) but I'm not seeing anything here which differs from the old discussion in terms of the reasoning or arguments being made. I also think that some users here may be forgetting that wikipedia is made not for us, but for the readers, and so determination of a primary topic should be based on their expectations, not ours. A7V2 (talk) 01:59, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support - The company is primary with respect to usage but the river crossing is primary with respect to long term significance, similar to Apple and Apple Inc., although unlike in that case the long term significance is not so great as to justify putting the river crossing at Ford. The current situation is nonsensical: either Ford Motor Company is primary, in which case it should move to Ford, or it isn't, in which case it shouldn't be a primary redirect. Repeated attempts to move Ford Motor Company have failed, so the DAB page should move to Ford per WP:NOPRIMARY. Havelock Jones (talk) 08:12, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I also support, but the current situation is consistent with plenty of precedents elsewhere. For example, Atlantic City, New Jersey is correctly named per WP:USPLACE, and Atlantic City correctly redirects to it per WP:primary redirect, with less prominent meanings such as Atlantic City, Wyoming listed at Atlantic City (disambiguation). That's all correct, because the NJ place is PT for "Atlantic City". The question here is whether the company is PT for "Ford". I agree with you that it isn't, but if we're wrong then the current page titles are valid. Certes (talk) 11:41, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think so. Atlantic City, New Jersey falls within WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT because it is "it is titled differently according to the naming conventions". There's no such convention for car companies: we have Honda, not Honda Motor Company. Havelock Jones (talk) 18:57, 21 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Early history

2001-Sep-08 03:27 Ford created
2001-Sep-10 17:17 Ford moved to Ford Motor Company (DIFF)
2001-Sep-10 17:16 Ford (disambiguation) created at the base title
2002-Sep-24 09:14 Redirected Ford to Ford Motor Company (changed disambiguation page into redirect, since all links are going to a single subject)
2003-Jan-18 14:08 Ford (disambiguation) re-created at the base title
2003-Jul-02 15:58 Scope changed to convert the disambiguation to Ford (river)
2003-Jul-02 17:20 Ford (disambiguation) created
2004-Jun-19 13:58 Ford moved to Ford (river) (DIFF)
2004-Jun-19 13:58 Ford redirected to Ford (disambiguation) (DIFF)

Then, from 26 November 2004, the Ford redirect's revision history is up to 98 revisions as a low-level edit war over the target simmers. – wbm1058 (talk) 03:45, 11 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Revision history of the redirect was swapped to Ford (disambiguation) (in lieu of burying it here) and is now up to 102 revisions. – wbm1058 (talk) 05:26, 22 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]