Talk:No Crystal Stair

Requested move 9 February 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 section.

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No Crystal Stair → No Crystal Stair (book) – I think the phrase is much more commonly associated with the poem itself, "Mother to Son", and the line should redirect there. A cursory gsearch agrees with me. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. — Twassman [Talk·Contribs] 06:13, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:OVERPRECISION. The brand new article Mother to Son would not be titled "No Crystal Stair". I've added a link to the new article from the first sentence of No Crystal Stair so that anyone looking for the new article can easily find it. Station1 (talk) 07:13, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Station1: Overpreciision only applies to article titles, not redirects. If the criteria for a redirect was 'could be the title of the article', we'd have to go around deleting thousands of redirects. Additionally, one article being older than another doesn't matter-- we have lots of vast content gaps, poetry being one of them, and on the flip side we delete hundreds of articles from 5+ years ago. When I search for 'No Crystal Stair', the first result is the poetry foundation's listing of "Mother to Son". It's further clear that the phrase "No Crystal Stair" has been used numerous times outside of just this book as a metaphor ([1], [2]), but they all originate with Langston Hughes's poem, and there's a wealth of scholarship that uses the metaphor of a crystal stair to reference the poem rather than this book([3], [4],[5],[6],[7],). Yes there is two whole journal article about this book, but I don't see it outweighing all other scholarship. When somebody says "No crystal stair", they are far more likely to be referencing Langston Hughes's poem than this book. In fact, this book's title itself is a reference to the poem. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:55, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Parenthetical qualifiers are necessary when there are two or more articles that would otherwise have identical titles. There are other cases where an artificial title is desirable because one article is the primary topic for more than one possible title, but they are rare. In this case, there is definitely no title conflict, and, in my opinion, no evidence that most people searching for "No Crystal Stair" on WP are looking for the poem. This article averages only 5 views per day, which is not more than some similar novels. The fact that Mother to Son is a new article is important only because it has not yet had a chance to demonstrate significant interest through pageviews. If, in a couple of months, the new article gets a relatively large number of pageviews, this will be worth reconsidering, but all evidence so far suggests there will probably not be that level of interest, despite the quality and value of the article. Station1 (talk) 18:04, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support a quick Google Scholar search suggests that the vast majority of references to "no crystal stair" in published works refer to the line in the poem, so this should redirect there per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. If this move does not have consensus, at least the lowercase version should redirect to the Hughes poem. (t · c) buidhe 04:20, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  There's no problem redirecting the lower case phrase (currently a redlink) to the poem, since that's what the poem uses, while the novel uses caps. Station1 (talk) 08:19, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support someone could easily type caps looking for no crystal stair and the book is rather obscure. In ictu oculi (talk) 11:17, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
• Alt proposal – How about having a disambiguation page at the basename? While the lowercase version could make sense to redirect to the poem, I'd argue there's no primary topic for the Capitalized version. Paintspot Infez (talk) 01:16, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

  If "No Crystal Stair" points to either the novel or poem, either most or some readers will be where they expect to be on their first try. If it points to a dab page, no one will be where they expect to be. Station1 (talk) 08:45, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

• Support. People searching on this term are far more likely to be after the poem than the rather obscure book, whose chief claim to fame is probably its title! A DAB would be perfectly acceptable as per the alternate proposal IMO, but some people just don't like DABs at base names. That just reflects our different ways of working IMO. Andrewa (talk) 18:13, 25 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Station1. Sole such Wikipedia main title header, thus no need for a parenthetical qualifier. Various lines from Shakespeare, Keats, Shelley, Byron, Longfellow, Poe, etc have been used as titles of books, plays or films without the need for each of those lines to become WP:PRIMARYREDIRECTS, especially when a hatnote, such as the one atop the book's entry states, For the poem with this line, see Mother to Son. Furthermore, the line which ends the poem is in lowercase and the lowercase redirect, no crystal stair, continues to flow to Mother to Son. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 07:46, 7 March 2021 (UTC)
• Support per Buidhe. The book does not meet the criteria of a primary topic, and should be disambiguated, as per WP:QUALIFIER. 162.208.168.92 (talk) 20:27, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Capitalization matters and the book is the primary topic of the capitalized title. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:54, 11 March 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose - I'm not normally a big supporter of WP:DIFFCAPS, but in this instance it seems justified. The poem is not really a contender for the "no crystal star" title, particularly when capitalised.  — Amakuru (talk) 11:39, 11 March 2021 (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.