Wikipedia talk:Article titles

WP:CONCISE

Full disclosure: I came to this page again from a discussion at Talk:May 1968 events in France. This edit by me is not related to any of the arguments from that discussion, however. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:14, 15 November 2019‎ (UTC)

OK.Herostratus (talk) 01:46, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Parenthetical disambiguation for all topic articles

Washington (state) is obviously disambiguated from all the other people and places with this name at Washington. But there are dozens of articles related to the state that I don't believe actually need this parenthetical disambiguation, for example List of lighthouses in Washington (state) doesn't need a disambiguation from another other List of lighthouses in Washington. The latter is now a redirect after User:Thrakkx moved it and 21 other articles to include (state). In several cases they also converted the original name to a dab page like List of high schools in Washington, but I don't think this is necessary either as "Washington, D.C." already has a different name (in some cases the title has "District of Columbia"). A hatnote would also work. Should there really be a parenthetical for all pages related to a main topic that has one or can that be just those that need it? Reywas92^Talk 18:52, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

Mostly quoting myself from the discussion on my talk page:

There are nearly 100 articles where this disambiguation existed before my edits, including History of, Music of, Government of, City government in, Law of, Legislative districts, Cannabis in, List of federal lands in, List of newspapers in, Economy of, List of people from, Vehicle registration plates of, Same-sex marriage in, Capital punishment in, List of earthquakes in, Wind power in, Scouting in, United States presidential elections in (and all of its year-specific articles), COVID-19 pandemic in, Outline of, and Index of Washington (state)-related articles. Also, basically every single category about the state of Washington.

Nearly all of these articles have a Washington, D.C., equivalent and so disambiguation is clearly needed for the ones I changed myself. I think it's clear that other editors have concluded, implicitly or otherwise, that every other article needs it too. Obviously there are minor exceptions, such as List of counties in Washington, since Washington, D.C., does not have counties.

Washington, D.C., may already [have] a different name, but in the opening sentence of its article, we state that it is also known as just "Washington". Thrakkx (talk) 19:00, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

It is inappropriate to have List of lighthouses in Washington (state) and leave List of lighthouses in Washington redirecting there per WP:MISPLACED (disclaimer: I wrote this essay, and just published it to be able to point to it in this comment- so consider it an explanation of my point of view). So, it should either be moved back to the undisambiguated title, or become a disambiguation page. However, what would it be disambiguated with? There isn't a List of lighthouses in Washington, D.C.. If there are any lighthouses in Washington, D.C., surely the state would be the primary topic and anyone looking for lighthouses in D.C. could be served with a hatnote. As for List of high schools in Washington, there is nothing wrong with the set index/dab page created, but an argument could certainly be made that the state is the primary topic, so this seems ripe for discussion via a requested move. All of these should be considered on a case by case basis whether there truly is no primary topic between the state and the city, or whether the a hatnote to the analogous D.C. articles is sufficient. Mdewman6 (talk) 19:09, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

"Allegations of _____" titles

Sorry if this is addressed elsewhere but I didn't find it--is there a policy on how allegations of titles are managed? It makes for poor sorting alphabetically when so many disparate articles regarding allegations are not titled with the subject first.

• Allegations of war crimes in the 2006 Lebanon War
• Allegations of apartheid by country
• Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden

Similar issues with "interpretations of", "analysis of" etc. SmolBrane (talk) 19:33, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

The DEFAULTSORT magic word (see Help:Magic words § Behavior switches) can be used to specify a sort key for these aricles when shown in category listings. isaacl (talk) 22:12, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

RfC notification

There's a RfC regarding article titles for boxing matches at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Boxing#RfC about replacing "vs." and "v" with "vs" in boxing match article titles. – ².O.^Boxing 11:04, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Google limits length of titles in search results. Big difference in page views

This info could be mentioned in WP:CONCISE section.

Hundreds of people a day apparently look up "incarceration rates" or similar in Google search. A clear and shorter Wikipedia title effected a 4-fold immediate increase in page views when reverting back to a shorter title:

• List of countries by incarceration rate

See:

• Talk:List of countries by incarceration rate#Reverted back to "List of countries by incarceration rate"
• Talk:List of countries with annual rates and counts for killings by law enforcement officers#Title length

--Timeshifter (talk) 05:44, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

That's an interesting result. But there are a lot of benefits of a concise title beyond SEO, and I don't think we need to enumerate them in this guideline, in the interest of keeping it, well, concise. Colin M (talk) 13:58, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Actually, on further inspection, I think you might be misreading the data. I think the apparent drop in pageviews is mostly a consequence of that pageview template not including views via redirects. If you compare views for the two titles, the loss in views for the original title after the rename is at least partly accounted for by the gain in views for the new name. You can also take a look at the views for the original name with the "Include redirects" box checked in the pageviews web UI. There's still a bit of a drop, but it's far less dramatic than a 4x decrease. Colin M (talk) 14:07, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

It still looks like a big jump in views. A 2-fold increase. That may not matter to you. Maybe you edit Wikipedia for the pure joy of wikitext, and not because it is an encyclopedia reaching vast numbers of people with easy to access, understandable info.

But I think others, many others, will disagree with you. And so a few lines in WP:CONCISE will help Wikipedia reach more clueless Trump and QAnon supporters (for example) who will more easily find accurate info. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:17, 20 March 2023 (UTC)