User:SMcCandlish/MoS/IDENTITY

Proposal I decided not to run with, as "too close" to the current controversy of the time (during last US presidential election).

Probably worth doing now that things have chilled out, but needs rewriting.

In the uproar about the Hillary Rodham Clinton -> Hillary Clinton page move debate (among others), I took a step back and thought "we make various exceptions to WP:COMMONNAME, even for fairly simple things like natural disambiguation; meanwhile WP:BLP is one of our most serious policies. Surely we can institute a variance here."

So, with no further ado or intro:

Proposed rule (in one wording or another)

If: A) a living person presently (so far as is known) prefers a particular name; and B) that name is not the common name, but is well-attested enough in reliable, independent, secondary sources C) to be the second-most common name, and D) recognizable to at least a large minority of readers, then E) use that subject-preferred name.

Ground rules

Do not fixate on the exact wording. This is a proposal to agree to a general idea and then tweak the exact wording, in followup discussion, to insert into policy. If this is going somewhere, don't bog it down with nit-picks. Use the discussion section to make wording arguments that are too long to fit a short !vote, if you feel the need to do so.

Notes

This passes the "Cat Stevens test", i.e. Cat Stevens would not be moved to Yusuf Islam (fails point D).
Common-sense expectations: It means that if the second-most popular name is a shorter nickname/hypocorism, or variant-spelling version of the most common name, it is essentially automatically recognizable. Inclusion of middle names and additional surnames count, as do inverted family–given name order (e.g. for East Asians).
It doesn't have to be used as the main name in sources. Frequent mention in mainstream press/TV is enough. Most people who know who Bono is don't know his real name is Paul Hewson. Most people who know who Magic Johnson is do know his real name is Earvin Johnson, I'd wager. If you don't like these examples, think of different ones, and don't worry about it.
I'm tired and can't think of another real would-be-moved example right this instant (none of them listed at WP:AT; I checked) but here are three "could have been" examples:
- If David Johansen, later Buster Poindexter, had not gone back to David Johansen, his article would be at Buster Poindexter [Lead: 'Buster Poindexter (born David Johansen) ...']
- If Ricky Schroeder, later Rick Schroeder, had not changed his mind and gone back to Ricky, he'd be at Rick Schroeder [Lead: 'Rick (Ricky) Schroeder ...']
- If Earvin Johnson, better known as Magic Johnson, was sick to death of "Magic" and wanted to be known as Earvin and had been public about this preference for some time, he'd be at Earvin Johnson [Lead: 'Earvin "Magic" Johnson ...']
This has implications for more than titles. For example, Scarlett Johansson in on-record as hating being called "ScarJo", and it is not frequently used in high-quality sources, mostly tabloids, blogs, entertainment magazines, and primary source materials (gossip columns, reviews) in newspapers. "ScarJo" should not appear in the lead section of her article, much less in boldface, since that would be Wikipedia asserting it's an acceptable alternative name. The nickname and her well-sourced loathing of it would still appear somewhere in the body of the article.
This is all BLPs only. The day they knock off, back to the COMMONNAME.

Support

[DO NOT POST HERE, THIS IS NOT A REAL RFC, just a draft]

Oppose

[DO NOT POST HERE, THIS IS NOT A REAL RFC, just a draft]

Neutral

Discussion

Potential discussion points are: whether secondary sources are required (i.e., WP:ABOUTSELF primary sources would not be enough?) to established that the preference is "well-sourced"; and, what would constitute a large enough minority (and how that would be determined, e.g. relative percentage of sources, or what). Also, I just made up the wording "If a living person presently (so far as is known) prefers ...". If the transgender-related wording from MOS:IDENTITY can be repurposed and people prefer it, fine. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<