Wikipedia talk:Article titles

Propose presenting content before style in WP:CRITERIA

With deletions and additions shown, I propose use of text such as:

Deciding on an article title

Article titles are based on how reliable English-language sources refer to the article's subject. There is often more than one appropriate title for an article. In that case, editors choose the best title by consensus based on the considerations that this page explains.

A good An optimal Wikipedia article title will have the characteristics:

• Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject area will recognize, and
• Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. See #Precision and disambiguation below;

and many will also have the characteristics:

• Naturalness – The title is one has a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that which editors would naturally use to link in [[Hyperlink|links]] to the article from other articles;
• Conciseness – The title is no longer than necessary to identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects, and
• Consistency – The title is consistent with the pattern of similar articles' titles. Many of these patterns are listed (and linked) as Topic-specific naming conventions on article titles, listed in the box above.

I also removed the text "Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English" from "Naturalness". Recognisable titles also "convey what the subject is actually called in English" but, as demonstrated below and elsewhere, an application of naturalness may result in titles that do not "convey what the subject is actually (or at least most commonly) called in English".

• In regard to Consistency:
  • Bkonrad has expressed the view that: "... consistency only really comes into play when disambiguation is necessary, in particular in the choice of parenthetical (or in some cases comma-separated or other appended) disambiguating phrases. That is, consistency rarely matters in choosing between "Foo" and "Bar" where both terms are alternate names for a subject..."
  • PBS cites: ".. a problem when articles were named a certain way years ago and then in the name of "consistency" editors argue against usage in reliable sources so that the names in the group can remain consistent, as closing admins often vote count opinions this can result in articles remaining at a title which is not supported by usage in reliable sources because of "no conensus for move".
  • BD2412 provides examples which, despite being judged as "far fetched"/"slightly ludicrous", demonstrate how an unfettered interpretation of "Consistency" could produce extreme results;

• In regard to Conciseness less is not necessarily always more. M-185 (Michigan highway) gives more than M-185. Similar to Shu (Egyptian god), Tutu (Egyptian god) and Tutu (Mesopotamian god) would both give more than Tutu (god) regardless of disambiguation. add: Similarly I have just proposed: Daily Star (United Kingdom) → Daily Star (UK tabloid) and The Sun (United Kingdom) → The Sun (UK tabloid). Why just disambiguate when you can also inform.

The wording of Conciseness here would also very clearly favour such moves as Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton but surely such a move should not be affected by the "criteria" for a "good Wikipedia article title".

"See also my recently created: Wikipedia:List of Johns whose Britannica article titles contain broad description. While I don't want to suggest that we necessarily go this far I think it is worth noting that a provision of more full forms of description can be appropriate in some circumstances. Titles should have optimum length with regard to both readability and provision of description.

• In regard to Naturalness, while I am sure that there are other examples that may also be of note, I have presented recent examples such as Heinz (company) → Heinz Company that violate precision and the actual name of the subject. There is also the problem regarding this criteria inadvertently acting to WP:ADVOCATE for the use of Natural disambiguation. We can also note that the issue, in biographic articles of presenting first names first is also mentioned in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). Also as mentioned, titles such as Mary Luana Williams, John Gibson Smith and John Lucian Smith are all "natural" in that they follow the prescription of "Natural disambiguation" and yet titles such as Mary Williams (social activist), John G. Smith (poet), John L. Smith (U.S. Marines Corps pilot) are more WP:PRECISE as they use commonly recognisable names. Wikilink stylisations should have little bearing on article titles.

On the basis of the above I don't agree with Blueboar in the view that "The ideal is that we achieve all five goals with the same title."

Instead I think that we should achieve all the goals that are appropriate, in each instance, for the achievement of the optimum title for each subject. The important thing is that readers (perhaps regardless or familiarity) are best able to recognise and identify the subject. Other issues may or may not have relevance.

I don't argue in the statement that "A good Wikipedia article title has the five following characteristics:" However I think that an optimum title may, on occasion, drop some of them. While not objecting to the use of the word good, why settle for good? GregKaye 10:24, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Side comment, interpolated: I note that it's still at Heinz (company), surely because "Heinz Company" is an outright falsification, a fake proper name.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:30, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg... you keep referring to an "optimum title"... I am not sure I understand what you mean by that term. Please define what an "optimum title" is, and how it might be different from "best title" or "most appropriate title" or any other term we might use. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I am making reference to Project page wording in the content:

• Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title.

This was a text that was produced in response to a previous issue that I raised. I have no preference in regard to exact wording in relation to this current proposal and presented "I propose use of text such as: ...".

However I think that the current wording is too formulaic in that it seems to present as virtuous Hyperlink driven formatting, formatting that weighs towards brevity from sufficiency information and consistently applied methods of formatting when not all of these issues will give best/optimal results in all circumstances. GregKaye 12:45, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

OK... but I still don't understand what the intent of the proposed change is. I think that it has something to do with countering the arguments of those who dislike parenthetical disambiguation. Am I correct in thinking this? Is this the intent? Blueboar (talk) 13:26, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

The intent is to stop the guidelines from being (or being taken as being) unnecessarily prescriptive on issues which potentially may get in the way or the production of a best possible result. The whole thing does not need to be complicated. For me the whole topic is (or should be) summarised in the second sentence of the project page "The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles." Its all about effective description in the context of effective disambiguation. Effective description at its best uses familiar terms with precision. Wikipedia has made the choice to favour disambiguation within its titles as opposed to disambiguation in parenthesis or subtitles as is the case with Britannica, or disambiguation within text or with super or subscript numbers as in many dictionaries and glossaries of terms. Fair enough but its still all about, to use different words, explanation and topic clarification. The rest is detail.

However I think that the problem of "This page in a nutshell" is I think presented in that text: "Article titles should be recognizable, concise, natural, precise, and consistent." Quality of description is not even on the agenda.

PLEASE, PLEASE, now I have said that can editors refrain from presenting some absurd and preposterously long scaremongering example article title in bold or redlinked type. By now such a response will be considered in bad faith. No genii is being let out of a bottle. All I am saying is that the primary function of a title is description and that Wikipedia editors shouldn't have such strict direction as to how that description is delivered.

I would also appreciate it if editors could take a look at dictionary definitions of concise which describe a notably different thing from what we present. GregKaye 15:16, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Once again, there is a conflation of WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURAL. Someone that does not understand the present policy cannot propose to change it. RGloucester — ☎ 15:18, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester do you not view that both the WP:CRITERIA: "Naturalness" and the disambiguation method: Natural disambiguation both relate to issues of presentation. What I have suggested is that, if possible, a different name be given to naturalness because it seems to me that adds to the rhetorically presented shortcuts: "WP:NATURAL", "WP:NATURALDIS",.. and "WP:NATDAB" to act as WP:SOAPBOX for the format of "Natural disambiguation". RGloucester, please consider addressing the argument as presented rather than the editor presenting. Twice I have asked you "Please explain what value you see in the content with the questionable title "Naturalness"". On this occasion please consider answering. GregKaye 17:27, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

What an odd question. Article titles should feel natural to the reader. In other words, we call "Rome" as such, rather than as "Roma", as the title "Rome" is more natural to the English-speaking reader. Likewise, we use Kiev instead of Kyiv. The naturalness criterion ensures that we use titles that the reader will known and understand. It ensures that jargon common in specialised sources does not predominate over what is usual to the average Anglophone reader. The name "naturalness" is not ideal. If I were to choose, I would rename the "naturalness" criterion as "natural", and change the shortcut. Natural disambiguation is a separate issue. As an example, "New York City" is natural in terms of disambiguation, but not the most natural in terms how an average English speaker refers to the city. He will usually simply call it "New York". However, at this point, with the shortcuts and names so entrenched, I do not see it wise to unsettle the system, which would result in mass confusion. RGloucester — ☎ 17:53, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

When I speak or write about NYC, I almost always include the "City". But what would I know? I'm 3000 miles west of there. Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

As a Briton, I know it as "New York". As a Briton working in America, in New England, I hear it as "New York", and sometimes as "the City". I don't think I ever hear it called "New York City". The city seems to have taken the primary topic status, as it is usually the state that gets disambiguated, i.e. "New York state". RGloucester — ☎ 18:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

On the proposal, I agree with RGloucester that it's confused and confusing, like many of Greg's opinions on titles. Dicklyon (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Dicklyon, if you are going to damn ideas of mine as confused and confusing, please be specific. Since I #Proposed change in the Parenthetical disambiguation text this has resulted in a change from a text that read "Parenthetical disambiguation: If natural disambiguation is not possible, add a disambiguating term in parentheses, after the ambiguous name" to a text that reads: "Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title." Please note that none of this is done with tendentious intent. It has been quite convenient for me to have a strong line presented at WP:NATURAL when opposing RMs related to "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant otherwise known as "ISIS", "ISIL", "Daesh", "Islamic State group" etc. and "Islamic State". Please don't disparage my sincere efforts to make improvements in the format of the encyclopedia. If there is anything that I say that you disagree with then please let me know. If I have said anything that comes across to you as confusing then please say and I will attempt to clarify. 87.115.47.210 (talk) 08:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Several thoughts at this point...

1: If the problem is with the guidelines, then I would suggest the solution is to try to fix the guidelines not the policy.

2: I agree with RGloucester in saying that the WP:CRITERIA goal of "Naturalness" is not the same as the concept of "Natural disambiguation". However, I agree with Greg when he notes that there may be some confusion over terms... since both contain the word "natural". As a solution, I would try to come up with a new term for the narrower concept of "Natural disambiguation" (really a form of precision) rather than attempt to redefine or omit the broader concept of "Naturalness".

3: RE Greg's comment that Wikipedia has made the choice to favour disambiguation within its titles as opposed to disambiguation in parenthesis or subtitles as is the case with Britannica - Um... No... Wikipedia has not made that choice. It does not favor one form of disambiguation over the others. It intentionally allows for whichever form of disambiguation is deemed most appropriate for that specific topic. This will mean that in one article title, parenthetical disambiguation will end up being preferred... while in another different article title, "Natural" disambiguation will end up being preferred. The POLICY however, favors neither, and intentionally devolves the choice to the article level. Blueboar (talk) 18:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

RGloucester , The titles that you mention are all centrally covered in Recognisability / WP:UCRN, WP:OFFICIAL and the WP:AT opening statement "The title ... distinguishes it from other articles." If "Roma" was the most commonly recognisable designation for the capital city of Italy then we would use that. As far as wikilinks (as mentioned in naturalness) are concerned there are plenty of pages that use the redirect Kyiv and I would not be surprised if there were other pages that used piping such as [[Rome|Roma]] or [[Kiev|Kyiv]]. The policy is contradictory. The example of New York City, if anything, is an example of where Naturalness proves to be redundant. See: The Saint in New York (film), Englishman In New York with singer "Sting", "walking down Fifth Avenue"; Chet Baker in New York with an album cover image with skyscrapers in the background; An Englishman in New York with "Godley & Creme" beginning: "Demented New York athletes staggering round the block". In these cases reference is (naturally) made to the city but without city. Surely the main argument for the title New York City is a mixture of WP:UCRN, that "The title ... distinguishes it from other articles." and WP:OFFICIAL as demonstrated here in cases in which the description "City of New York" is not used. In this case naturalness is primarily a reasonably well supported let out to aid disambiguation. Certainly this does not cover "Naturalness" as "The title ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles".

Can you think of any cases that require Naturalness that are not otherwise covered by other policies? Although not necessarily a suggestion, do you think that Naturalness would permit a title such as New York (U.S. state)?

As shown there are many cases in which a rigid application of consistency and our interpretation of conciseness may, if anything, lead to a less than optimal title. GregKaye 07:18, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar Thank you

1: I quite agree in fixing the guidelines.

2: I also agree that there are differences between the WP:CRITERIA goal of "Naturalness" and the titling method presented as "Natural disambiguation" and thank you for your recognition of confusions raised due to the similarity of names.

3. The wording and presentation of the guideline, as far as I can see, clearly favours the titling presentation option: "Natural disambiguation". As mentioned, "Naturalness" is presented as a "CRITERIA" and as a "characteristic." of "A good Wikipedia article title" and the rhetorically presented shortcuts: "WP:NATURAL", "WP:NATURALDIS",.. and "WP:NATDAB" are WP:SOAPBOXed at Wikipedia:Article titles#Disambiguation.

In contents linked from WP:RM editors regularly justify arguments for the use of Natural disambiguation "as per WP:NATURAL" as if this was policy. GregKaye 07:50, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the wikilawers amongst us often cite guidelines as if they were inflexible policy. It's how they try to "win" debates. Blueboar (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Question for all: can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"? I think it might be. Blueboar (talk) 12:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It may satisfy WP:NATURALNESS, but it is not WP:NATURAL disambiguation. WP:NATURAL has nothing to do with the title itself, only the way that title is disambiguated from other things of the same name. RGloucester — ☎ 13:17, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

• When working through references from a search on: Special:WhatLinksHere/John Smith (Ohio Senator) I immediately found the link: [[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]] and I think that presentation with "Senator John Smith" would fit titling with "Naturalness". Google trends was unable to give statistics related to this example. I will present some search data when I can. GregKaye 16:22, 13 April 2015 (UTC)
• @Blueboar, @RGloucester as mentioned I have had trouble getting results in google trends.

In trend results achieved, "senator John McCain" got high results getting up to 100 of the units used.

"John McCain senator" got no results.

I conducted other google trend searches for Presidents "Andrew Jackson" "Andrew Johnson" who I chose as i thought that people might add the term president to searches on their relatively commonly used forms of name.

In trend results achieved "President Andrew Jackson" and "President Andrew Johnson" both scored highly as search terms used.

The search terms "Andrew Jackson president" and "Andrew Johnson president" did not get any results at all. Why? Because they are unnatural. People do not speak in the language of Yoda.

In this light I think that we have to reconsider our position on "Naturalness". In current conception it is defined as: "The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English."

When set to the standard of this definition the title "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" fails abysmally on all counts.

We have to start by being coherent in the content of our guidelines and by not placing these guidelines in irrational sequences. People aren't likely to use either John Smith or John Smith Ohio Senator when searching for the content that we have entitled: John Smith (Ohio Senator). GregKaye 18:12, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

• Strongly oppose: These criteria have existed in a careful balance for years, and served us well in that balance. Demoting more than half of them to optional would lead to utter chaos in article titling, and enable a flood of idiosyncratic "cleansings" by tendentious, lone-wolf opponents of one or another of the naturalness, conciseness and/or consistency policies as applied to their pet articles. TD has already been awash in tooth-gnashing of this sort for years; the last thing we need to do is multiply that by a factor of 10. No thanks.

  Yes, there is no connection between the naturalness criterion (of the base title), and natural disambiguation; they're two separate uses of the same root word. It would not hurt to clarify this. I think we're stuck with "natural disambiguation", but "naturalness" is an clumsy word for the concept, and we could probably replace it, e.g. with "intuitiveness".

  I also find myself uncommonly agreeing with RGloucester, twice no less: "Someone that does not understand the present policy cannot propose to change it", and that does appear to be what's going on here. And yes, the city of New York is clearly the primary topic for that name, and in real-life English the state is usually the one disambiguated.

  Finally, this is not even close to accurate: consistency only really comes into play when disambiguation is necessary. Any experience at all in WP:RM discussions will disabuse anyone of this notion. One of the most common rationales for a page move is consistency with the titles of related articles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Neutrality and precision can trump all

I think that the current RM discussion regarding "2014–15 Yemeni coup d'état → ..." gives strong demonstration of this point.

GregKaye 13:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

One example that goes your way doesn't prove a general, sweeping statement like that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Is the "Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles" section detrimental?

From the policy page:

Using minor details to naturally disambiguate articles

Titles of distinct articles may differ only in small details. Many such differences involve capitalization, punctuation, accentuation, or pluralization: MAVEN and Maven; Airplane and Airplane!; Sea-Monkeys and SeaMonkey; The World Is Yours and The Wörld Is Yours. While each name in such a pair may already be precise and apt, a reader who enters one term might in fact be looking for the other, so appropriate hatnotes with links to the other article(s) and disambiguation pages are strongly advised. Special care should be taken for names translated from other languages and even more so for transliterated titles; there is often no standardized format for the English name of the subject, so minor details are often not enough to disambiguate in such cases.

This form of disambiguation may not be sufficient if one article is far more significant on an encyclopedic level or far more likely to be searched for than the other. For instance, an album entitled JESUS would probably have its article located at JESUS (album), with JESUS continuing to be a redirect to Jesus. If the album or other possible uses were deemed by editors to be reasonably likely search results for "JESUS", consensus among editors would determine whether or not JESUS would be the location for the album article, a redirect to Jesus, a disambiguation page, or a redirect to the existing disambiguation page Jesus (disambiguation).

Plural forms may in certain instances also be used to naturally distinguish articles; see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (plurals)#Primary topic for details.

When was this lot added and can someone link to the RFC where it was okayed? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:04, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That's a good question. I always interpreted "may differ only in small details" as a statement of sometimes practice, not that it's a good idea. No idea where it came from, but you can probably check. Dicklyon (talk) 06:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It changed wording a bit here in 2011, so check there for words to search back on. Dicklyon (talk) 06:21, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That and the immediately previous edit by SMcCandlish were briefly discussed here. Keep looking back... Dicklyon (talk) 06:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah, of course, it was part of the great Oct 2009 "merge tryout" by Kotniski here, referencing WT:NC#Merge tryout, which is now at Wikipedia_talk:Article_titles/Archive_19#Merge_tryout. This makes it very hard to figure out. Kotniski and others did a ton of thrashing of all aspects of TITLE that fall, from which we will likely not recover. Dicklyon (talk) 06:38, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

• Another potential and related contradiction (though with topic not specifically being covered in WP:AT) is found between: Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(plurals)#Exceptions which says:
  • Articles on people groups. Canadians, French people and Koreans in Japan are all acceptable titles. Titles like Spaniard should be recast in the plural, i.e., Spanish people. If a plural title without the word "people" is available, it is almost invariably chosen; e.g., Bangladeshis is consistently preferred to Bangladeshi people.

and Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ethnicities and tribes) which permits "African American" despite the presence in Wikipedia of 20 articles starting: "African American and ..", "African Americans at .." or "African Americans in ..". Related issues are currently being discussed in the current RM Korean American → Korean Americans. GregKaye 09:28, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

User:Dicklyon I'm looking at Talk:Bon-Bon (short story) where the new WP:SMALLDETAILS is being cited as "policy". Whose policy? In ictu oculi (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

It's part of WP:AT, which is policy. If you don't like how it reads, you can propose an RfC to change or clarify the parts you disagree with. Dohn joe (talk) 14:19, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

That's just B2C. He's a minimalist, favoring concise above everything else, and eschewing disambiguation where small differences can be used instead. There's not much support for this approach, and the fact that it is mentioned on a policy page just gives him a hammer to likes to use to advance his position over others. There's nothing in the statement "may differ in small details" that supports his claims that this is preferred, or the only way to be "supported by policy". Dicklyon (talk) 15:09, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Once again... this policy is all about balancing options, not imposing fixed "rules". Sometimes a small difference is enough to disambiguate two similar titles... and at other times it isn't. What we do here in this policy is present the options available (and the rational behind those options... we present the things to think about when determining what the best title for the topic might be. We don't say: "in X situation always do this"... because sometimes the best solution is to not do "this". Instead we say "in X situation we often do this, but there are other options... which option is considered best is determined at the article level, by balancing multiple factors that are unique to the subject/topic." Ultimately the only firm "Rules" in WP:AT are that article titles must be unique, and that they are chosen by consensus. The entire point of this policy is to give editors flexibility to choose whatever title they think is best. We don't try to settle every debate over titles... instead we guide the debates, by presenting the things editors should discuss during the debates. Blueboar (talk) 17:33, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Exactly; +1 to Blueboar. But B2C sees it differently, constantly trying to algorithmetize the choice of title such that discussion becomes irrelevant; he calls it "naming stability" (see User:Born2cycle#A goal: naming stability at Wikipedia, which says "...my chosen primary area of interest, focus and expertise, at least for now, is stabilizing article titles. / I am convinced that true title stability ultimately comes from having rules that are clear and unambiguous as reasonably possible..."). When a title is as short as possible, by his reasoning, it's stable, since it can't be made any shorter and no other criterion is as important as conciseness, which he takes to mean shortness. Within this world view, any option that takes more characters rather than distinguishing by case or punctuation is "not supported by policy". Don't fall for it. Dicklyon (talk) 18:11, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Why is B2C disproportionately involved in setting title policy at all when he doesn't edit Wikipedia and when RFCs have removed his essays? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:14, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Damned good question. I generally find myself opposing virtually every suggestion he makes here, at MOS, at RM, etc. Not because it's him proposing them, but because they simply don't make sense. Although principally intended to address vandals and trolls, WP:DENY comes to mind. I'm in favor of largely ignoring these "remaking WP in my own idiom by re-re-re-proposing the same changes until I win" system-gaming attempts. Enough is enough. This has been going on for years.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: I agree with the gist of the section, but the extended JESUS example is a bunch of pointless blather and should be deleted. I.e., truncate from "For instance, an album entitled..." onward, and change that tumid and hyperbolic piped link "far more significant on an encyclopedic level or far more likely to be searched for" to simply "primary topic".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:07, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Changing Aston Science Park article title

Resolved

 – Request directed to proper forum.

I'm currently working at Innovation Birmingham Campus, part of Birmingham Science Park Aston. The article for the latter however, is titled as Aston Science Park. I've been asked to change it to the current name of the park but am struggling to do so as I am new to Wikipedia. Any help would be most welcome.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Owskiedoodle (talk • contribs) 09:37, 13 April 2015‎

Please follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Requested moves.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:11, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change to "Naturalness"

Proposed text:

• Naturalness – The title has content that readers are likely to look or search for and which editors would naturally use in [[Hyperlink|links]] to the article from other articles. Such content will be consistent with commonly used descriptions of the subject in English.
• Naturalness – The title is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. change made - GregKaye 06:33, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
• Naturalness – Wording within the title is of a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English. change made - GregKaye 12:24, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Current text:

• Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

In an above text Blueboar asked the, I think, insightful question: "can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"?"

My answer would be that to consider "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" as a title with "Naturalness" according to our definition would be a real stretch.

In support of this view I presented a readily apparent example link: "[[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]]"

I also presented trend results achieved, to indicate "senator John McCain" to be a relatively used search term while, for whatever reason, "John McCain senator" did not get onto the scale.

Search results also indicate that, in books:

• "Ohio Senator John Smith" got "About 64 results"

"John Smith Senator of Ohio" got "8 results" and

"John Smith Ohio Senator" got "1 result"

In effect, according to the current Wikipedia definition, "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" was shown to have the least naturalness of any form of title content words that got results and, according to current Wikipedia guideline text, should not be regarded as a "good title" which is, to my mind, nonsense. "John Smith" is the name of the subject and we give fair clarification of the actual identity of this "John Smith" by referencing him as an "Ohio Senator"

In many cases there may be more than one form of words that may potentially equally ".. convey what the subject is actually called in English". A suggested replacement text might indicate "... content (which) will be consistent with commonly used descriptions of the subject in English". "...usually convey what..." is not as strong as "...will be consistent..."

I also think that it is also worth commenting that, in isolation, "Ohio Senator" can certainly also be considered to be a content with Naturalness as is clearly demonstrated by these Ngrams.

While I think that the above proposal will constitute an improvement in the text, I still do not consider naturalness to be as important an issue as precision. The primary concern should be what the subject is. Methodologies of presenting the subject should then be considered in this context. GregKaye 07:35, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. There is no need to change our wording on Naturalness. The way I look at it, the natural title (per the current language of Naturalness) would be the non-disambiguated "John Smith"... which does convey what the subject is actually called in English.

The problem is that we can't use that natural title - due to its ambiguity. So... with Naturalness unachievable, we need to choose a title that will best achieve the other four goals. IE of all the forms of disambiguation available to us, which will best achieve the goals of Recognizability, Precision, Conciseness and Consistency. Blueboar (talk) 11:57, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose – The wording is excellent as it is. RGloucester — ☎ 13:21, 14 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose The dab extension is not part of naturalness. In the example given the name is "John Smith", all of the rest is disambiguation is it is for John Smith (banneret) and Sir John Smith, 1st Baronet. -- PBS (talk) 15:32, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I agree in what you say in that, "the natural title (per the current language of Naturalness) would be the non-disambiguated "John Smith"". In my thinking, this is why I wanted to talk of the content of the title and not of the title itself. I agree also that this part of the title presents what the subject is actually called in English.

As I have previously argued, at this point it would certainly be inappropriate to attempt to retain natural disambiguation by say evoking reference of a middle name (such has been the case with "John Gibson Smith" and "John Lucian Smith") merely to achieve "natural disambiguation" if he was/is not commonly known with reference to that middle name.

However, as you say Naturalness is then unachievable if we are make a goal of precision at least by means of parenthesis based disambiguation. In effect, by choosing the parenthesis route to achieve precision, we fall short of the achievement of naturalness by two of its three parameters. "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" may be a navigable title but, as far as either search terms or formats of text that might be used in links are concerned, the full title falls short of Naturalness. This is only retained by the "John Smith" portion of the title.

PBS I think that if anything my text suggestion would help clarify that "The dab extension is not part of naturalness". The DAB extension is part of the WP:Article title. It is the other content of the title that retains "Naturalness". GregKaye 15:49, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

You miss my point... once there is a need to disambiguate, Naturalness is given significantly less weight compared to the other four goals. However, that ONLY occurs when there is a need to disambiguate. When there is not a need to disambiguate, Naturalness is actually near the top in terms of weight.

I think you may be directing your efforts at the wrong section of the policy. Since your issue seems to center on disambiguation issues, and specifically with WP:NATURAL (and the confusion it causes with the broader goal of "Naturalness"), perhaps a more fruitful discussion would be whether there is a better term than "Natural disambiguation". Blueboar (talk) 16:46, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar, while I apologise that some of my attempts with this text have had their own flaws I still see a problem in that the text regarding naturalness does not, as far as I can see, make itself sufficiently distinct from WP:NATURAL.

The text at WP:NATURALNESS is inaccurate in stating: "The title is one that ... editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles"

This does not stand up in practice.

Links to: "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" include: "[[John Smith (Ohio Senator)|Senator John Smith]]".

Links to "Windsor, Berkshire" include: "[[Windsor, Berkshire|Windsor]]".

I think that a more accurate text could, with minor addition, be written as:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and with wording that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

The main issue that I have tried to present is that, following the second sentence of WP:AT, the issues of the issue of description (and precision) in titles gets comparatively disregarded.

GregKaye 07:10, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose What does "The title has content ..." even mean? Dicklyon (talk) 17:18, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

Fair comment but it forms an explanation of guidelines that is not internally erroneous. GregKaye 05:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

And what does "it forms an explanation of guidelines that is not internally erroneous" mean? What language are you attempting to write here? Dicklyon (talk) 05:50, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

Dicklyon Please note the internal contradiction.

We present a policy/guideline content that states, "The title is one ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles"

We then present another content that permits a title in a form of "John Smith (Ohio Senator)".

Very simply this is not a "title ... that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles".

I am trying to write in clear, non contradictory English.

A content such as: "Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..." literally does not work.

A alternate content such as: "Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and with wording editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..."

"Naturalness – The title is one is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..." does.

In relation to searches the existing wording rejects titles such as Hillary Rodham Clinton (in favour of Hillary Clinton) out of hand. Please consider the search trend evidence. A title such as, "Hillary Rodham Clinton" is barely searched for. A wording such as 'Hillary ... Clinton" is.

GregKaye 20:35, 16 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, I can't really take your non-parallel construct seriously. A sentence of the form "The title is one that ... and that ..." makes structural sense. Your proposal to change to "The title is one that ... and with ..." is much less parallel, and therefore harder for a reader to interpret. Please try again with well-formed English so we can see what you're getting at. Dicklyon (talk) 14:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't think there is an overwhelming need to change the current wording. I'm also not sure what exactly the intended effect of the change is. Calidum T|C 14:47, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Calidum There would be benefit in changing the wording which I have hopefully clarified above. As is repeated below: people do not search on terms such as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" or "John Smith Ohio Senator" and they regularly do not use texts in these title texts in links. They search on and link with wording from within these contents. "WP:NATURALNESS" is supposed to be distinct from "WP:NATURAL" but, at present, their contents are pretty well identical. GregKaye 06:42, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose—The new wording is problematic, introducing vagueness and redundancy. Tony (talk) 14:49, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Tony The text I presented reduces vagueness in that it removes an inaccurately applied assertion. My clarification may be applied more consistently in the form: "Naturalness – The title is one is written with wording that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles..."? I don't think that there has ever been a problem with the "look for" statement. However, people do not search on terms such as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" or "John Smith Ohio Senator" and they regularly do not use texts in these title texts in links. At present "WP:NATURALNESS" is just a repeat wording of "WP:NATURAL" which I know is not the intention. GregKaye 06:33, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose. The title is written with wording - yuk. DexDor ^(talk) 06:43, 18 April 2015 (UTC)
• Suggest:

Naturalness – Wording within the title is of a form that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such titles will usually convey what the subject is actually called in English.

• Yet another example that I think may give an indication that some editors may not see that parts of titles can have Naturalness was in a recent RM for John Green (producer) → John Robert Green. As far as I could see the subject is not generally called "John Robert Green" and I think it would be far better to present wording within the title as having naturalness rather than falsely presenting that naturalness must apply to the complete title (as one) for the title to reach the standard of "A good title". GregKaye 12:47, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg, you are still focusing purely on cases where the most natural name is ambiguous, and thus where we need to disambiguate. Naturalness often gets put to one side (or at least is given a lot less weight) once there is a need to disambiguate (because the title that best achieves the goal of naturalness - the non-disambiguated name can not be used). In such cases, the goal Precision can be given more weight than the goal of Naturalness.

We might be more willing to consider that there is a need to edit the definition of Naturalness if you could come up with an example of a non-disambiguated title where that definition is problematic. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar Hillary Clinton. To illustrate the extent of the issues here is a section of the proposed text from Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request#Move request.

• Naturalness "Hillary Clinton" is a name which fits with the WP:NATURALNESS description of a "title ... that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles." This is clearly shown in extreme results from a "Hillary Clinton" : "Hillary Rodham Clinton" Google trends search.

About 2300 main pages link to the redirect page "Hillary Clinton" which can be judged to overlap significantly with the

About 2800 main pages that directly and/or indirectly link to "Hillary Rodham Clinton". This number should be noted to be inclusive of pages that include/also include redirects from namespaces such as Hillary Clinton, Hillary Rodham, Hillary R. Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will also be inclusive of pages that include widely used templates ¹²³⁴ which are amongst pages that use redirects such as "[[Hillary Rodham Clinton|Hillary Clinton]]" and "[[Hillary Rodham Clinton|Clinton]]"

Most problem examples though relate to ambiguous titles which are have been most regularly encountered in my work at WP:RM. Portions of text may be stretched so as to shoe horn descriptions into a, quote, "Natural disambiguation" or something like parenthesis will be added. GregKaye 18:36, 18 April 2015 (UTC) GregKaye 18:36, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

Greg... I don't mean to sound like I am dismissing your efforts to find an example ... but there is a current move request at the Hillary Rodham Clinton article that cites Naturalness as a rational for the move (along with other criteria). Can you come up with another example that isn't the subject of a current debate? Blueboar (talk) 22:38, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

There is no current move request at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton and I am not yet sure whether the draft proposal, substantially written by me, will be submitted. I have no idea why you are stipulating a requirement for examples from unambiguous titles. The simple fact that there is a problem as related to the greatly expansive sphere of Wikipedia's ambiguously titled articles should be enough. GregKaye 07:22, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

My apologies... you are correct on the HRC article's current status... the article has been the subject of multiple move requests in the past, but currently it isn't... instead we have an RFC about whether to have yet another move request. Of course it is never a good idea to change policy in the middle of a debate that hinges on it... doing so opens us up to accusations of changing the policy in order to win the debate. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I was the editor that proposed Hillary Rodham Clinton → Hillary Clinton and, if anything, the change in the text of Naturalness lessens that case. There is nothing tendentious here. Its just that the current WP:PG content here is irrational and, as is illustrated in this and other examples, Naturalness cannot be applied to the whole title. GregKaye 08:36, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

• Faulty logic: "can a title like John Smith (Ohio Senator) be considered "Natural"?" – "My answer would be that to consider "John Smith (Ohio Senator)" as a title with "Naturalness" according to our definition would be a real stretch." – We've covered this many times before, but here we go again. WP:NATURAL applies to the base title only. An extended title like this consists of a base title, and an disambiguation. They're severable, and the disambiguators frequently change in response to one RM or another without any involvement from WP:NATURAL concerns. I must have seen this come up several dozen times here and in RMs over the years, but for some reason this doesn't seem to stick in everone's memory. Thus I must oppose the proposal. It's a radical, sweeping alteration, that would upend over decade of our standard operating procedure. Also: Revert The title that readers are likely to look or search for back to The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for. The change was neither grammatical (forming a sentence fragment, not a sentence) nor rational. In innumerable cases, there is no "the" title that readers are likely to look for. We could say "The title is the one that readers are most likely to look or search for", the grammatical way to say what I think the edit was getting at, but this is basically nonsense, since we have no way to statistically sample this to determine the answer to that question. We're often simply making an educated guess that the title we're considering best is likely to be toward the top end of the most-looked-for alternatives.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:54, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

  PS: Reading a topic or two higher up where the same editor proposing this has had it patiently explained to him twice how he's confusing the naturalness criterion with natural disambiguation, when the two are not related in any way, I'm completely mystified that this later proposal perpetuates the same obvious error.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:41, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

  Follow-up: I've raised the issue on that editor's talk page, and attempted to resolve the confusion (to the extent there really is any), with a simple clarification, as detailed at #Minor tweak to end pointless confusion between WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDIS, below.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:04, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Circularity - WP-article title to book - book as justification for WP-article title

There is a move request at Talk:ISO basic Latin alphabet. I would like to know which rules can be applied there.

• Names in standards/Common name : "Basic Latin" is a proper name in the Unicode/ISO standard
• Names in some books, that have been published after establishment of the Wikipedia title - is that a source to use? Circularity:
  1. Wikipedia creates an article title about something that is not Wikipedia-internal (i.e. where it is not authoritative)
  2. the Wikipedia article title is taken as official terminology by some external person
  3. the person uses the term in a book,
  4. book is published
  5. Wikipedia uses the term that occurs somewhere in the book as justification for the Wikipedia article title

Is circularity allowed in reasoning?

Does circularity trump other sources? Lingufil (talk) 16:44, 15 April 2015 (UTC)

In matters of terminology (rather than facts) I don't think we should attempt to distinguish between sources that were published before wp and sources that may have been influenced by wp. If a reliable source uses a specific term then we can use it in wp - regardless of whether the RS may have been influenced by wp (or anything else for that matter). DexDor ^(talk) 19:55, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Agreed, and it's not like there's proof of that influence anyway. Even if there were, I'm not sure it would matter. WP exists in the real world (in a big way – it's among the top 10 most used websites in the world, and is often the #1 search result for things that are searched for in Google, etc.). It thus necessarily exerts an influence on language usage, including the acceptedness of the names of some things, and there isn't anything we can do about that. If there were some odd case of gaming the system, in which a PoV-laden term was used in a WP article, and an editor thereof who was in off-WP life a professional writer then used the term in ostensibly-reliable print so he could basically come back here and cite himself as an external source, in the face of opposition to the article title from other editors, well, that's a crazy bridge we can cross if we ever come to it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Musical symbols in page titles

Do pages such as B♭ (musical note) violate section 8.1 on the use of symbols in page titles? Tayste (edits) 03:35, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

A tangential issue: why the space between B and the flat-sign? Pretty awful. Tony (talk) 14:50, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

That’s just the font. There is no space; the flat’s just displaying as a full-width character, I believe. —174.141.182.82 (talk) 19:08, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

B♭. How it is written! --Richhoncho (talk) 15:52, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

First, I would not use the term violate in reference to that section of the policy (saying "avoid" implies that more exceptions exist than if we said "don't"). Second, the "flat" symbol is reasonably standard and common when writing about music, so I don't think that symbol is what the policy is really talking about. Finally, all that said, I would suggest that the best solution would be to avoid the issue entirely... by merging all articles on individual musical notes into an article on musical notation or something. Blueboar (talk) 15:59, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

Agree with Blueboar. The current discussion relates to: Wikipedia:Naming conventions (technical restrictions)#Forbidden characters where it only goes as far as to state that: "Due to clashes with wikitext and HTML syntax, the following characters can never be used in page titles (nor are they supported by DISPLAYTITLE): # < > [ ] | { } For articles about these characters, see number sign, less-than sign, greater-than sign, bracket (covers several characters), vertical bar." There is no specific problem with the musical notations for sharp (♯) and flat (♭).

As far as "Naturalness" is concerned, the titles from A♭ (musical note) and right round to G♯ (musical note) all contain content that readers may look for and which editors may use as links with use of links being demonstrated in Template:Semitones displayed as follows:

The titles do not have content that potential readers may readily search for.

This, however, is made redundant by the creation of navigation pages such as A-flat and G-sharp. GregKaye 07:37, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

To expand upon my comments above... Given that these articles on various musical notes are very short ... and are unlikely to grow... I would suggest merging them into the article on the Chromatic Scale. Each individual note could be given a section of that article (sections which could be linked to in other articles). Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

What benefits, if any, would there be in removing the B♭ (musical note) type articles? I would suggest that contributors to these articles perhaps be pinged to canvass views or a discussion thread on such a proposal be placed on a relevant page or Wikiproject. There is a lot of technical information involved which goes beyond my knowledge of typography and some such. GregKaye 07:28, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

"I would suggest that contributors to these articles perhaps be pinged to canvass views or a discussion thread on such a proposal be placed on a relevant page or Wikiproject." – Raising the matter here is the nominator's 3rd venue in this matter after Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music theory#Consistency in page titles re -flat vs ♭ and -sharp vs ♯ and Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Music#Consistency in page titles re -flat vs ♭ and -sharp vs ♯. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 10:59, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks all for your comments. The symbols are much more than "reasonably standard and common" - they are near universal in writing about music. I would oppose the suggestion of merging all the individual notes into a single article; there are too many wikilinks to them that would be broken or at least obfuscated by this. I don't think the symbols in titles (with appropriate redirects and disambiguations) hinder searches at all. Tayste (edits) 22:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)

I agree: Merge and redirect. This is pretty much exactly the same issue as having 10 different micro-articles for minor characters in a TV show. As to the symbol question, I don't think it necessarily transgresses the policy. But it's probably a poor idea. Cf. Eth which is at that title, not at Ð or ð.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:33, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Using launch dates in place of hull or pennant numbers in ship article titles

TLDR: as a general reader, what seems easier to you: USS Nevada (BB-36) or USS Nevada (1914)?

This RfC proposes to replace hull or pennant numbers in article titles with launch dates. As my views have previously been made abundantly clear, I'll present them here.

Currently, Wikipedia's ship name policy specifies that hull and pennant numbers (e.g. USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70)) be used to disambiguate ships when appropriate. This is a change from an the older policy, which used them wherever possible, but there is at least a significant minority that still favors the approach.

Why should a general reader with no knowledge about warships know that they would need to type in something like (CVN-70)? At best, this is useless jargon for non-specialists. Worse, an argument for consistency falls flat when only a minority of countries use them; we only have these numbers for American and British/some Commonwealth ships. Now:

• With American hull classification symbols, it's a lot of unneeded fluff in the title, and WP:PRECISE should force us to drop it (unless another ship shared the same name, obviously). These numbers have been changed in a non-trivial number of cases, like the Template:Sclass-.
• With British pennant numbers, they're reused. If you can honestly tell me what ship HMS Ark Royal (91) is without looking or guessing, I'll give you a cookie. Not a single person can argue that pennant numbers are helpful to a general reader when they type a ship name in the search bar. As my colleague Parsecboy said, "Which is more helpful to non-experts trying to find the WWII Ark Royal in the auto-fill drop down - a list of articles with (91), (R07), and (R09) as dabs, or a list of articles with (1937), (1950), and (1981) as dabs?"

So given that it's pretty apparent that we've been perpetuating a system that is completely useless to helping our readers, I'm proposing that WP:SHIPNAME be changed to mandate the use of launch dates rather than hull numbers when disambiguation is necessary. We already do this for ships that predate hull numbers, and such a system would be far easier to navigate for our readers, who (a) are why we are here and (b) again, typically have little to no specialist knowledge about ships. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:58, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Before complaints roll in: I've placed this RfC here after the previous failure to obtain consensus at the Milhist talk page, the obscurity of our ship name policy page, and the desire to get comments from the wider Wikipedia community. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:58, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

Support/oppose

• I would tend to agree with this suggestion predominantly for the reason given above of jargon. --Izno (talk) 17:04, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
• I agree with using launch dates, but think a provision should be made for hull/penant numbers as redirects if such numbers have entered popular culture (I don't know of any).--Jim in Georgia Contribs Talk 17:38, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

  Oh, of course we'll have redirects. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:05, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

• In general I oppose a "dumbing down" or "lowest common denominator" approach, but given there isn't universal availability, & given RN practice to reuse, this proposal makes sense to me. (I somehow missed it last time. :( ) TREKphiler ^{any time you're ready, Uhura} 20:52, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
• Doesn't Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships control this sort of thing? I understand aright, it is that Wikiproject that is responsible for our non-standard use of non-parenthetical disambiguation placing the disambiguation terms at the front of the title (that is, we use "Russian light cruiser Aurora" rather than "Aurora (Russian light cruiser)" and so on). So why not ask them what they think? Herostratus (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Of course, and they had input into the Milhist discussion as well, but no consensus was reached. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 21:05, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
  • WikiProjects control nothing. They are simply groups of editors that happen to congregate to edit similar topics. --Izno (talk) 03:03, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

    If Wikiprojects control nothing, why do we have titles like "Russian light cruiser Aurora" instead of "Aurora (Russian light cruiser)" and so forth? Herostratus (talk) 14:10, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

    Presumably because a group of editors (who may or may not identify as participating in a particular WikiProject) got together and decided to put together some naming guidelines? WP:SHIPNAME is a Wikipedia-wide guideline, so if I could manage to get enough support (unlikely), we could make the name of the article on Aurora "Aurora famous boat".

    That aside, the reason why I said what I said is WP:LOCALCON (if you want, I can point you to the extensive discussion regards the naming of birds...). --Izno (talk) 14:17, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support - it's so much clearer and accessible this way. Red Slash 21:06, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support, the year of launch only happens once and is a good disambiguator if it is needed. Easy-peasy Cuprum17 (talk) 21:34, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose. The common way to distinguish between ships with the same name is to use the hull number. This isn't something we made up at Wikiepdia. Calidum T|C 21:37, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Calidum what do you propose using as a dab for ships such as the new HMS Ark Royal which if adopted as a name will have the same hull number as HMS Ark Royal (R09)? -- PBS (talk) 23:51, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
    • This situation has already arisen, and has been dealt with. RFA Sir Galahad (L3005) refers to two different vessels - That lost in the Falklands war and its replacement. Mjroots (talk) 08:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
      • I believe PBS is showing how years are required to disambiguate these specific ships, making them excellent examples of why our current naming system is a bit inane. :-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose: the main reason to use the hull number is that this is how most reliable sources disambiguate ambiguous ship names (although this may be something that is US centric.) In other words, disambiguating with the hull number will give you a more recognizable and natural title than disambiguating by year of launch. Blueboar (talk) 21:39, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
  • It's only more recognizable to people who research boats and ships on the regular. Which is not what most readers are doing. --Izno (talk) 03:03, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
• Strong support: I've argued for this a number of times. It seems to me that this is the best way to disambiguate ships (not perfect - but better than the current system); we already do it for ships without hull or pennant numbers, and for ships that pre-date such things; it helps readers in an intuitive manner, rather than presenting them with a list of jargon (both casual and specialist readers can benefit - I know a fair bit about ships but I still can't remember which Ark Royal was pennant number 91 - nor do I want to); worse still, hull numbers (as opposed to pennant numbers) are US jargon, and they change - more often than you would think (USS Langley had 3 in her lifetime, and there are many, many examples); you can still distinguish in the text between two US ships by hull number - but this is about disambiguating every similarly named ship in existence - what works for a book doesn't necessarily work for what is in effect a database; please let's do what we should have done from the beginning and use dates as disambiguators. Shem (talk) 23:41, 26 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support: Aids in editing ship articles too if I don't have to read through each ship's history to figure out which one existed at a certain time.Llammakey (talk) 00:56, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
• Support because too many of the numbers are reused. If it were not for that fact, I'd would agree with the "common way to distinguish" rationale. The "main reason is that's how many RS do it" rationale is a non-starter, though. We have our own criteria for naming, in a delicate balance, and "do what the specialist publications do" isn't among them. That would be a variant of the WP:Specialist style fallacy. We write for a general audience. It coincidentally turns out that this specialist style is also fairly common, at least for US ships. But this doesn't get around the WP:PRECISE problem posed by reuse of the numbers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:37, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Support U.S.N. hull numbers are purely administrative and are by no means fixed. They need to be discussed within an article just as does DANFS. To repeat my reply over at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ships to someone "hearing" hull number is part of the name:

Hull number is not part of the name as can be seen by ships with the same name and multiple hull designations and even numbers. They are not "renamed"—they are "redesignated" or "reclassified," sometimes in mass batches by memorandum and notice changing all of a certain classification to another, as to the Navy's view of their function/type. An example of mass change is with "CL/CA - Light and Heavy Cruisers." No names were changed, just the hull classifications, for the eight ships "redesignated as "heavy cruisers" (CA)" as a result of the London Naval Treaty. A quickly located single ship example is Markab which has a page here USS Markab (AD-21). Since I just picked that one at random a moment ago it is interesting what a good example it is of not very good use of hull number. From DANFS with my emphasis: 1) "Markab (AK‑31) was built as Mormacpenn by Ingalls" 2) "she was redesignated AD‑21" and 3) "she was redesignated AR‑23, 15 April and recommissioned 1 July" (1960). So, why is the Wikipage not (AK-31) or (AR-23)?

As Markab demonstrates, for disambiguation hull numbers are only incidental factors and may change as the Navy changes its view of a ship's function or even records housekeeping. Even now there may be a proposal circulating in Navy to get rid of three and four letter designations indicating "guided missile"—an obsolete term fitting all destroyers now—turning all the DLG and DLGN and DDG into just DL, DLN and DD. No hull ever has an initial launch twice—even if reconstructed. Further, unlike commercial companies, the Navy keeps good records of the launch dates for ships built for Navy (it sometimes blunders on commercial hulls taken in for naval service). saberwyn makes a proposal I could support with qualifications, the first being KISS and avoid "attack transport" when "transport" is good enough (there is that hull designation again: AKA and AP). The single exceptions should be those non commissioned U.S.N. craft that are not "USS" and bear the hull number as the "name" such as the PTs of WW II and the yard vessels of today. Palmeira (talk) 12:50, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Of course. It would be difficult to talk about USS PT-109 without referring to the hull number. ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes, but neither was PT-109 commissioned so "USS" is also not the case. Just an informed guess, but I think we can be fairly sure the majority of the vessels and craft in the U.S.N. inventory are not. Palmeira (talk) 16:06, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Wow, point to you. I've learned something today. In any case, that's the name of the boat, so it would remain in the article title. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:50, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

The USS misuse is only somewhat off topic here. Navy is very precise as that title "United States Ship" has both service and some legal weight. In formal Navy use it applies only to a ship while in commission, even being dropped during temporary decommissionings. In informal use the honorific attaches to vessels once in commission, but not to vessels that have never been commissioned. Here the common misuse for vessels never commissioned is somewhat similar to having articles titled "President Humphrey" or "President Goldwater"—could have been, served their country, but they never stood there taking the presidential oath to get that title. Palmeira (talk) 21:29, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

• Strong support - this is the standard way to disambiguate merchant vessels, and naval vessels in service before hull/pennant numbers were invented. It seems a logical extension to apply it to all naval vessels where disambiguation is required. If there happens to be two or more vessels of the same name launched in the same year, we can further dab by builder. Mjroots (talk) 17:26, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I personally disagree with second-level disambiguating by builder, because I think that is an incredibly obscure factoid. I know a lot about ships in the area that I'm interested in, but I couldn't even hazard a guess as to where most of them were constructed. If the point of this proposal is to make it easier for readers to get to where they want to go by removing obscure codes from the disambiguation, replacing it with an even more obscure piece of information that subject experts can't recall can't be helping. -- saberwyn 02:21, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
    • @Saberwyn: So, how would you disambiguate SS Espagne (1909) then? Mjroots (talk) 06:15, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
      • As an aside, where are the conventions for civilian ships codified? WP:SHIPNAME has some general stuff, then the rest is almost consistently military. Can't find where some of the more esoteric rules for civilian ships alluded to here and elsewhere in this discussion are kept.
        • The very first section covers the naming convention for civilian ships. Mjroots (talk) 08:00, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
          • Thank you, Mjroots. Must have not read the section heading that clearly, and with it being so generalised and lacking some of the specific hoops mentioned/alluded to for civilian ship naming, I assumed it was the overarching general stuff. -- saberwyn 08:16, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
      • @Mjroots:: The articles in question are SS Espagne (Anversois, 1909) and SS Espagne (Provence, 1909). Under what I think are the current conventions for non-military ships (see caveat immediately above), something along the lines of Belgian freighter Espange (1909) and French ocean liner Espange (1909) (dates left in to further disambiguate from other French and Belgian ships of these names and types launched). Under my suggestion of by-type disambiguation below, SS Espange (freighter, launched 1909) and SS Espange (ocean liner, launched 1909), although would also settle for Belgian freighter Espange (launched 1909) etc... shackling civilian ships to prefixes in this particular situation seems to make it harder rather than easier to identify and disambiguate the vessels. I don't have a clue where what the companies Anversois or Provence are (and what ties to these ships have to these locations companies post-construction? What if the build location was in Scotland? a Scottish company built these French/Belgian ships?), but under either of the above, I now know what the ship is called, what it is, and where it is from. Yes, this runs into problems with possible impressions of national ownership (but we identify companies by their nation of origin even if they're not nationalised, so doing the same for civilian ships shouldn't be a problem) and with flags of convenience (not sure how to get around this one, maybe "Foo-flagged shiptype shipname" for vessels with no association beyond flag of convenience?). -- saberwyn 07:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
        • @Saberwyn: The form "Nationality (ship type) (ship name)" is used for naval vessels which do not have a ship prefix. Thus HMS Speedy (1782) or French brig Speedy (no year disambiguation as it was the only one). It is not used for powered merchant vessels where thre prefixes PS, SS, MV etc are available to use. Another reason not to use ship type is that these can be changed during the ship's lifetime. A cargo ship may become a passenger ship, and vice versa. Mjroots (talk) 07:54, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
        • BTW, the disambiguation is by builder, not location. Mjroots (talk) 07:56, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
          • Why not? Those prefixes can be just as unclear to the uninitiated as the hull/pennant numbers are. And if ship types change (as they do for military ships in both prefix and non-prefix navies) this is a job for redirects and article-local consensus on the name. -- saberwyn 08:13, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
          • My apologies for the mixup, I have struck and tweaked my post. I think it highlights how unhelpful to non-experts identifying by builder can be. -- saberwyn 08:13, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
            • We don't want to go down the flag route. Ships change flags as often as they change names, if not more often. I try to find something that is a constant to use as a disambiguator. The builder is one thing that isn't going to change, whatever name or flag the vessel is under. The creation of appropriate redirects is an important part of article creation, as is the creation of shipindex pages. Mjroots (talk) 08:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
• Neutral, leaning oppose. Here we go again. The hull number vs launch year argument keeps cropping up every now and again: one side gets up, makes a few speeches with some valid points, and waves their shotguns in the air, the other side gets up, makes a few speeches with some valid points (either for their side or for maintaining status quo), and waves their shotguns in the air back, then the conversation peters out and nothing happens. My theory is that this is because there's nothing sufficiently broken to warrant the changes being asked for here. The system may be a little eccentric, but it works. The impression I get from the proposal is that the poor little readers come along to look for a ship, type the name into the search box, see a list of article titles appear with numbers in brackets, can't determine which one they want, then ragequit (or select one, find its not the one they want, then ragequit). I find this odd when the top response is the name without any disambiguators, which leads to a disambiguation page where a list of all the articles and further context to help people determine which ship they want. This disambiguation page is/should be clearly linked at the top of each subject page, again helping readers get to where they want to go if they end up where they don't. Is there any evidence of readers or proto-editors being driven away because of the current disambiguation schema? I think Hull/pennant numbers are a perfectly valid disambiguator and search term, because for the nations that regularly use them, a lot of the material involved with or referring to the ship clearly indicates it. I imagine that some people who come here have come across a ship baseball cap or other piece of apparel/promotional material, or an image with a number writ large on the side and are using it as the basis of their search. Texts like DANFS refer to the hull number when they refer to ships in the text. And yes, they change (more frequently when you use the British/Commonwealth process of recycling pennant numbers), but that's what redirects, disambiguation pages, and clear linking are for. I also agree with the logic behind the launching being the one common event in all ship's lives, but if the hypothetical reader is searching for a ship in the context of a date, the date is going to be for an event in the ship's history, which will likely be well removed from the launch year (I also disagree with using numbers without context, but I've already yakked on about that below). -- saberwyn 02:21, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
  • I do not see this suggestion so much for the reader as for having a single, clear distinction in the title to serve as the target for exactly those ship disambiguation pages you mention. That is where the naive reader should first land and those need to have enough description to identify a ship in time, type and indeed hull number(s). That should place the correct article one search and another click away. Go to the naming convention page we are discussing. Look at the hull number if/then options. One bunch of "ifs" in those instructions:

If a ship had several hull numbers in her career, use the best-known (Best known by the naive editor? By what survey of readers?) for an article title. In the article's lead section list all of her hull numbers. Make redirects from the others:

USS Bogue (CVE-9) should have redirects from USS Bogue (ACV-9) and USS Bogue (CVHP-9)

USS Bogue CVE-9/ACV-9/CVHP-9 is best known (Best known by the the naive reader? You mean dad's service aboard was during a brief and obscure hull designation time?) for her actions in the Second Battle of the Atlantic, when she was CVE-9.

If none of the several hull numbers is clearly the best-known, use the first:

USS Goldsborough (DD-188) should have redirects from USS Goldsborough (AVP-18), USS Goldsborough (AVD-5), and USS Goldsborough (APD-32)

Strike all those. Use year in the title as the target ID. Make sure each name/hull# has a redirect. Make sure the ship disambiguation pages show concise, but clearly identifying information for the naive reader or expert to quickly locate the target. Palmeira (talk) 03:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• • • "Best known" per consensus on the relevant article's talk page, with reference to reliable published sources, as with any article name? And any other possible options will be redirected and mentioned in the lead and on relevant disambiguation pages, as with any other article name. If anyone has a problem with a particular article title, that is where they should be going.
    • What about the if/thens for date-based disambiguation, to which your arguments could as easily be applied to?

      If the year of launch is not known (and how is the naive new-article-creator going to know where to find something like this if its not immediately evident) use <other milestone date> (What? With or without clarification as to what the date associates to?).

      In instances where a ship was captured or otherwise acquired by a navy or shipping company, or simply renamed, and the article is placed at that title, use the date that is in agreement with the name and prefix (actually in the current version of SHIPNAME)

      HMS Canopus (1798) rather than HMS Canopus (1797) (despite being launched by the French a year earlier, so.... don't use launch year when the ship name used for the article was not the ship name at launch? Now what?)

      In a few cases, one ship is so much better-known than her namesakes that she need not be disambiguated (Better known by the the naive reader? You mean dad's service was aboard a briefly-lived and obscure ship of the same name?)

    • The problem with trying to find One Rule to Rule Them All is that there are always going to be exceptions, if/thens, and caveats. -- saberwyn 07:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose I am not opposed to using the launch year as a disambiguator per-Se, however, whichever of these two methods we use it is going to cause issues in certain cases, especially to the uninitiated. I do not see the big problem we are trying to solve here. If we opt for a change then there is a whole lot of work involved for no actural benefit to the readers. Who is going to do that work, what good is served by all that effort? If we were just starting out then I suppose this discussion would be fine and we could proceed with whichever method we choose to use. Personally, if it were up to me I would use the method often used by (for example) the Royal Australian Navy and DANFS which is to use a Roman numeral after the name, eg HMAS Melbourne II, USS Enterprise I and so on, when the name is otherwise ambiguous. This has the added advantage of brevity. However, the current system has been in use for a long time and I fail to see the need to expend all the energy that would be needed to make the necessary change for no real benefit to the project. - Nick Thorne ^talk 09:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Comments and multi-threaded discussion

• As opaque as pennant and hull numbers can be, using a contextless year has the potential to be as well (drive-by readers are not going to know that the year is the year of launch, and if they are looking with a date in mind, it will be the date of a specific career event). Pick the British Commonwealth warship Vampire that served in World War II: HMS Vampire (1917), or HMS Vampire (1943) (The correct answer is both, but Casual Reader is going to ignore the former and be disappointed when they find the article on the submarine as opposed to the destroyer). Also, while readers will come here looking for "named ship that was involved in a specific war/incident", others will come looking for "unknown ship I saw a picture that had a specific number printed in honking great characters on the side". And for all the complaints of US hull number changes, three in a lifetime (which accompany major changes in role) are nothing compared to the Bathurst-class corvettes: those that came into service near the end of the war received a new pennant practically every year (at commissioning, service with the British Pacific Fleet, post-war) despite doing the same job. Also, in the event that this is a split "USN continues using hull numbers, RN ignores pennants in favour of launch years" (avoiding such as split is probably why this issue has gone on-and-on-and-on for so long), which side is going to force their view on the rest of the world (particularly on navies like Australia's which were part of the British system until the 1970s, then switched to a US-analogue)? I'd like to suggest a third option, where we disambiguate by ship type at the first level, then additionally by year of launch when multiple ships of the same type exits. The average reader has a general understanding of warship types (at minimum, they know the difference between an aircraft carrier, a submarine, and a warship... the rest is usually just sorting by size), more so than they would launch dates (particularly if the date they're looking for is well removed from launching) or obscure naval codes. The above example of Vampire become "HMAS Vampire (destroyer, launched 1917) (to disambiguate with HMAS Vampire (destroyer, launched 1956)) and HMS Vampire (submarine). This also has the benefit of paralleling the disambiguation scheme currently used for non-prefix-using navies, which follows the pattern of (not an actual ship) "French cruiser Vampire (year-o-launch-if-required)"... see Japanese destroyer Akebono for this in practice. -- saberwyn 02:42, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Comment. Iff this naming convention is adopted, we should omit "launched" and use the naming convention already used for civilian ships, e.g. HMAS Vampire (1917 destroyer). However, this does not mean that I support this proposal in general. Tupsumato (talk) 04:40, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

@Saberwyn: I disagree. While you bring up good examples, no naming system is perfect, and we won't be able to prevent confusion in all cases. That said, we can mitigate it as much as possible with the use of the launch date, and I believe that this will be sufficient in most cases. Regarding paralleling: I'd like to drop the jargon and see all the warship articles on Wikipedia named similarly (ie HMAS Vampire -> Australian destroyer Vampire), but I'm realistic and realize that that idea has an approximately zero percent chance of passing. ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 06:34, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

We don't disambiguate people by dropping a date behind their name and assuming that every reader and editor will implicitly understand that the context of that string of four numbers is a year, specifically the year of birth. We disambiguate them by what they are famous for doing. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people)#Disambiguating states that if two people of the same name exist, then they should be disambiguated by what they are most well known for (the vast majority of the time being their career), and if two people of the same name and career have articles, to additionally disambiguate with a date, in a format that indicates the context of the date (usually "born xxxx", but occasionally "died xxxx" if that is the more appropriate context). Eli Cohen (disambiguation) has the example of one (actor), two (politician born xxxx) and two (footballer born xxxx). Organisations and entities are disambiguated in a similar fashion, by their industry/role, then by date if necessary. Greater consistency across articles, combined with clearer context for readers should make it easier for them to find what they want. Also, specifying the context of the date in the disambiguation means that when necessary, the date can be changed to something more relevant for the subject... how can we disambiguate by launch year if that is unknown, and if we place another date in its place, won't some people incorrectly assume that this is the launch year?

@Tupsumato:, that's why I suggested adding "launched" in the disambiguation string. My first impulse on seeing (1917 destroyer) is that its a 1917-class destroyer or something equivalent. It also implies to me that most-to-all of the ship's history is pinned to that date, when your average ship is still months or years away from entering service.

@Palmeira:, fully in support of KISS ship-types for disambiguators. -- saberwyn 01:16, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• Questions: These questions have occurred to me:
  1. what is the text of the proposed mandate?
  2. what evidence do you have that readers are not able to find the correct ship using the disambiguation methods currently in place?
  3. if this proposed disambiguation method is adopted, what plans have you made to ensure that it is quickly and accurately implemented?
  4. what are the impacts on the template suite used by WP:SHIPS especially those that operate on ship names?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. @Trappist the monk: Thank you for these excellent questions. This will change Wikipedia:Naming conventions (ships)#Naming articles about military ships to mandate launch dates instead of hull numbers in military ship article titles where disambiguation is necessary. We already do this for navies without hull numbers or warships that predate the system, so this would extend that.
2. That's an unfair question. Readers generally don't comment or edit, so evidence for or against it is unobtainable. That said, logically speaking, it's pretty obvious: everyone knows what years are, versus an (admittedly unscientific) survey of my friends revealed only one that knew what hull numbers were. I wouldn't expect that to change much for the general population, and I'd be surprised to see someone argue that point.
3. I think you've got the cart before the horse, but my general plan is to find a coder that will determine whether it needs a dab or not, and if so use the launch parameter in the infobox to move the article. There is no need to quickly implement it, as (a) I'd like to make sure we do it right and (b) Wikipedia won't be finished soon anyway.
4. I'm not familiar with all of the SHIPS templates, but I'm not planning on taking unilateral action without consulting with the template experts. Again, it's a process—first consensus, then the other items. In any case, (and speaking off the cuff) I don't expect it to have earth-shattering/world-ending effects. The templates already have to deal with launch years for ships like HMS Victorious (1785). Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. Yes, but you've just restated the proposal and not answered the question which was: what is the text of the proposed mandate?
2. I understand that readers don't generally comment but, if there is no evidence of need, I have to wonder if this is a solution looking for a problem rather than the other way round. If there is evidence that the current disambiguation mechanism is broken, let us fix it. If there is no such evidence, then at the end, a deal of work may have been done to no great effect.
3. Generally it is a good idea to know beforehand how to get from where you are now to where you want to be. If it is only you who will be doing the work, that's one thing. But if you expect others to do the work then before the workers give their consent, don't you think that you should be able to tell them what that work entails?
4. I guess I was hoping that as someone committed to this change, you would have already considered the impacts of what you are requesting. A big part of doing it right is knowing beforehand as much as possible about what we will need to do before we commit to doing it.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. The proposal doesn't make that clear?
2. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to get the evidence you're looking for. It's similar to the problem faced by the WMF and the Visual Editor—very few of the comments on it came from the people it was aimed at (new users) and there are no good ways to obtain them.
3. I don't understand the question, as I've laid out what work it would entail. I don't personally know how to code it, and I think it would be unnecessary to require that of every similar RfC proposer on Wikipedia.
4. Again, it's the cart before the horse. If there's consensus to make the change, we have all the time in the world to talk about potential problems and implement it. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:03, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

1. No, it just says that if this proposal is adopted then we will make some edits to WP:SHIPNAME. The edits could be a simple or a complex. If we could know now how you intend to change WP:SHIPNAME, that might help editors make a decision now and perhaps forestall another long discussion about the text change later. It's that planning thing I mentioned before.
2. The proposal then is to apply a fix to the ship article disambiguation system without evidence that the system is broken.
3. You don't have to understand template markup to ask someone who does to help you understand what impacts your desired change will have on the current template suite.
4. Not cart before horse at all. It's 7 Ps. If you know that information then editors here can make a more informed decision now so that we don't have to take all the time left in the world to have more discussion. Concluded RfCs carry a certain weight of authority that binds editors to the conclusion. I don't understand how editors can approve this or any RfC when they don't know what they are committing to do.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:38, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: First, this really is the wrong venue to discuss something like this. The proper place would be one of the relevant WikiProjects. I gather that there has already been some discussion at the project level, and that no consensus has been reached. Trying again at the policy level smacks of Forum Shopping. Second, whatever the consensus here may be (and it does look like it is leaning toward supporting the proposal), I would strongly oppose actually adding anything about ships to this policy page... to do so would be inappropriate instruction creep. The WP:AT policy needs to remain generalized (applicable to any and all article titles) and should not descend to giving instruction that only relates to a narrow range of articles - all in one specific subject area. That's what project level naming conventions are for. Blueboar (talk) 12:16, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
  • @Blueboar: Please read the proposal. First, WikiProjects don't control policy. Second, this is a proposal to change WP:SHIPNAME, which falls under this policy. Thanks! Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 15:38, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Ah... I missed the link to WP:SHIPNAME buried in the proposal (my apologies). I would think that a proposal to amend a naming convention, should take place at the talk page of the naming convention in question (ie at WT:SHIPNAME and not here). This talk page is for discussing edits to this policy (ie WP:AT). That said... I am also concerned that there is nothing at WT:SHIPNAME alerting editors to the fact that a discussion is taking place (here) which would affect that naming convention. At a minimum that notification needs to be done (I will take care of it). Blueboar (talk) 16:05, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
      • It's pretty routine to bring discussions like this to the main policy or major guideline page which "governs" them if there are WP:LOCALCONSENSUS concerns, or potential ones, about the subsidiary page in question, or just a concern that not enough editors will notice. Such discussions can even be taken to Village Pump if people want to. Many NC issues get discussed at WT:AT, just as many MOS sub-guidelines' content are discussed at the main WT:MOS page. A substantial number of editors find this preferable, or it would not so routinely happen. I certainly agree that notifying the talk page of the would-be-effect page is necessary (and see that you've done so).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:46, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
        • As I said in the opening statement, SHIPNAME is a pretty obscure policy. Thank you for placing a notification on the talk page. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:50, 27 April 2015 (UTC)
  • Also, this is not at all WP:FORUMSHOPPING. It's routine, though not required, to try in a wider, better-watched WP forum to resolve a dispute when a more localized attempt fails to come to consensus. Forum shopping is either attempting to get one's way by taking a proposal to a new forum after it's been explicitly rejected in one, or trying to get one's way by launching the same proposal in multiple forums at the same time in hopes that one of them will go the way the proponent desires. An accusation of forum shopping is an accusation of bad faith.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:26, 28 April 2015 (UTC)
    • Blueboar - I agree with SMcCandlish's comments. The whole idea of having the discussion here was to bring in a wider range of editors' input, i.e. not just those who write ship articles. Of course it means that those of us who do write ship articles might need to argue the case a bit more strongly than would otherwise be the case, but that is not a bad thing in itself. Mjroots (talk) 15:15, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

OK... My point was that this talk page should really be for discussing changes to WP:AT. That's why I was initially confused and thought someone was proposing that we add something about ships to this policy (which I would have opposed as instruction creep).

What I would have done (had I been the creator of the proposal) was to set up the actual discussion at WT:SHIPNAME... but to gain a wider audience and participation I would have posted a notice here on this talk page (and at the Village Pump (policy) page), asking people to participate in that discussion. I agree that we want those who know this policy to be involved in any discussion... I was just quibbling about where the discussion should take place (mostly to explain my initial confusion).

In any case, since the discussion is already taking place here, I would agree that we shouldn't move it. Just make sure that anyone who might be interested (such as the MILHIST project) is notified. Carry on. Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Minor tweak to end pointless confusion between WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDIS

I changed this:

• Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

to this:

• Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title (exclusive of any added parenthetical disambiguation) usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

This clarifying addition should save us quite literally thousands of future editor-hours that would be wasted in continued pointless debates in which WP:NATURALNESS and WP:NATURALDAB are being confused (by a very small number of people, but with a truly remarkable degree of tenacity). If any further confusion results, we should simply change "Naturalness" and "naturally" here to "Intuitiveness" and "intuitively", and reserve the word "natural" for natural disambiguation (or find an alternative to that phrase; either way will work).

I'm sure we're all sick nigh unto death of these ridiculous AT and RM arguments in which someone refuses to acknowledge that it's logically impossible for WP:NATURALNESS to include any added parenthetical disambiguator, since no one in the real world is actual named, for example, "Jane Smith (composer)". Please, just let this be the end of it, once and for all. We have way better things to do with our editorial time than to entertain for even one second longer any more of this nonsense/pretense to the contrary.

PS: I've thought carefully about this. This clarification really does apply only to that clause. A parenthetically disambiguated title actually does still have to be, in its entirety, a balance between recognizable, precise, and consistent, as well as something that editors (aware that it needs disambiguation) would naturally use to link to the article. Even the "readers are likely to look or search for" sub-criterion applies to paren-DABed titles, to an extent; we value consistency in paren DABs precisely because this consistency helps both editors are readers get to the right article, and many RM discussions are about making paren DABs consistent between similar articles for this reason alone.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:44, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

I support the addition. This does not mean that (when disambiguating) we shouldn't consider non-perenthetical alternatives (sometimes they are appropriate)... but adding a parenthetical does not change the naturalness of the base name. The addition makes that clearer. I also think it would help clarify things if we found another way to refer to "natural disambiguation" (such as "non-parenthetical disambiguation") and got rid of the potentially confusing short cut "WP:NATURALDAB". It makes no sense to have two shortcuts (pointing to different sections of the policy) that can be confused with each other. Blueboar (talk) 18:15, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

Re: This does not mean that (when disambiguating) we shouldn't consider non-perenthetical alternatives – Right; that's WP:NATURALDIS. I also have suggested we use something other than "natural disambiguation"; either that or change WP:NATURALNESS to WP:INTUITIVENESS or something. But we can try one change at a time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  22:39, 27 April 2015 (UTC)

The following comment has been refactored into this discussion from User talk:GregKaye#Naturalness criterion and natural disambiguation.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:12, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish I want to thank you for the edit to WP:AT that made here which adds the content "(exclusive of any added [[#Disambiguation|parenthetical disambiguation]])" to the text so that it now reads:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title (exclusive of any added parenthetical disambiguation) usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

I have edited to:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title (exclusive of disambiguating additions) usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English.

As mentioned, the text that that is presented at Wikipedia:Article titles reads: "An article title is the large heading displayed above the article's content. The title indicates what the article is about and distinguishes it from other articles."

The immediately following content says "Precision – The title unambiguously identifies the article's subject and distinguishes it from other subjects. (See § Precision and disambiguation, below.)" and I am very glad of the clarification of the definition of "title" previously used.

What would you think of the use of a text:

Naturalness – The title is one that readers are likely to look or search for and that editors would naturally use to link to the article from other articles. Such a title (exclusive of disambiguating additions) will convey what the subject is actually called in English.

Lastly, I was concerned about your edit comment regarding "utterly pointless RM debates". What do you mean? Which utterly pointless RM debates? If you want to make an accusation then please make it clearly. GregKaye 02:26, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

There are no "disambiguating additions" that are not parenthetical. That wording is very likely to confuse editors into thinking it might also in some way involve natural disambiguation; i.e., it would reintroduce the exact same NATURALNESS vs. NATURALDAB confusion that we're trying to prevent! Look at the 5 forms of permissible disambiguation listed at WP:AT#Disambiguation (in the order given in WP:AT):

1. Natural: When we use Siamese cat instead of Siamese (cat), the naturally disambiguated phrase is, by its nature as natural in English, among the ways that the subject is actually named in English.
2. Comma-separated: Exactly the same thing applies; it is actually just a variant of natural disambiguation that happens to be punctuated: Bangor, Maine; Diana, Princess of Wales. These are real names for these subjects, used in English-language sources, with that punctuation style. I.e., they already fit WP:NATURALNESS by definition (though some are not the WP:COMMONNAME; we sometimes don't use the most common name, but another common and naturally disambiguating one, when it allows us to avoid using the most common name with a tacked-on parenthetical disambiguator).
3. Parenthetical: Something, most often the name of (or shortening of) a Wikipedia Category, is added in round brackets after the basic title (almost always the clear COMMONNAME), to prevent page title collisions. This is the only disambiguation case to which the exclusion, in the "Such a title (exclusive of any ...) usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English" clarification, can logically be applied.
4. Descriptive name: This type, e.g. Campaign history of the Roman military or List of birds of Nicaragua, doesn't involve the naturalness criterion, but simply either fits pre-existing patterns of WP naming, or like Pontius Pilate's wife, is just the best we can come up with after a consensus discussion, for topics that are notable but which have no clear common name. In both types of case, these titles are essentially artifices of WP itself. (Truth be told, this doesn't appear to be clearly addressing disambiguation, and should be modified to include only examples that, unlike the Roman ones, are titles that disambiguate.)
5. Combination of parenthetic and comma-separated: Already covered by "exclusive of any added parenthetical disambiguation", for the parenthetical part, and by #2, comma-separated, for that part. It's not a separate class of disambiguation, but instruction on how use two classes at the same time.

So, there is no rationale for using something vague and confusing like "exclusive of disambiguating additions". It would almost certainly be misused by detractors of natural disambiguation to launch a series of tendentious RMs against names they don't feel fit WP:COMMONNAME but regarding which consensus has already decided to balance COMMONNAME and NATURALDIS. I.e., using "exclusive of disambiguating additions" would easily be misinterpreted as a major change to, not clarification of, article title policy – an "alliance" between COMMONNAME and NATURALNESS against NATURALDIS. We are not contemplating anything like such a sweeping change here, and years of stability at RM in the interplay between the naming criteria tells us there would be no consensus for such a change.

Next, we can't change "usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English" to "will convey what the subject is actually called in English" (a discussion that's been had before, I believe), because it's often not true (for many subjects, we cannot determine a certain COMMONNAME). More importantly, this simply isn't the place for it; it already has policy elsewhere on the page: Whether the name is or is not the most common name in English (and whether we use that or not) is governed by WP:COMMONNAME and its interplay with other aspects of naming policy, including all of the WP:CRITERIA. That is to say, WP:NATURALNESS is making a side observation, not setting a rule, when it says "usually conveys what the subject is actually called in English". The point of it is simply a hint in the right direction, and it is actually kind of tautological, since if a title is in fact the common name (in English) of the subject, then it already automatically meets the naturalness criterion, by definition. It would actually be safe to entirely remove the clause. But altering its meaning into a new, very strict rule, would be major policy change, and it would upend thousands of article titling decisions.

Either of the two (perhaps unwittingly) major changes to policy you've proposed would need separate, well-advertised consensus discussions, and I cheerfully would bet everything I own against their success.

Finally, observing the pointlessness of RM debates that confuse NATURALNESS and NATURALDIS is not an "accusation" against anyone, it's an observation about a certain kind of debate (an inanimate noun) and its pointlessness. All RM debates that have confused NATURALNESS and NATURALDIS were wastes of editorial time and energy, not just those involving any particular editor(s).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  14:12, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish You say that "There are no "disambiguating additions" that are not parenthetical."

Two arguably relevant topics relating to WP:NATURAL are: Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Sarah Jane Brown in which WP:NATURAL has been a well used argument in both cases. WP:NCDAB specifically states:

Two clearly relevant topics relating to WP:COMMADIS that are specifically mentioned in the guidelines are Windsor, Berkshire and Diana, Princess of Wales. Windsor is normally called Windsor. Please consider Ngrams for princess diana,diana princess of wales. In comparison"Diana Princess of Wales" hardly shows. She was very often known simply as "Diana".

Can I also remind you of the many multiple RMs that you requested on animal breed topics and for which I was you main and most regular supporter:

Not by you but another move that went through was:

Tango (music) → Tango music

In all of these moves one of our main, if not our principle argument was on the basis of WP:NATURAL. The number of article that rely on additions for their disambiguation are legion. A great many of them, without the text change, might fail WP:NATURALNESS

GregKaye 16:08, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

All of that has seemingly been for no point other that to try to find some way to interpret 'there are no "disambiguating additions" that are not parenthetical' in a way that allows for further pointless argument. I have better things to do that entertain more of this sport-debate. If you like: 'There are no "disambiguating additions" that are not parenthetical, to which WP:NATURALNESS applies', then, though it's a reasoning error to classify as "additions" the examples you give. Note also that I already gave a detailed analysis demonstrating precisely why the other forms of disambiguation don't qualify for the exclusion we're making with regard to the parenthetical ones, so it's a moot point anyway. But just to clear it up: "Diana, Princess of Wales" does not really involve a disambiguating addition. (Addition to what? It can't be "Diana"; if that has a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC it would probably be the goddess.) Rather, it is a more complete, source-supported, natural-language name, as an alternative to the many other choices ("Diana Spencer", "Princess Diana", "Diana (Princess of Wales)", "Diana Spencer-Mountbatten", etc.). Similarly, "Windsor, Berkshire" does not involve a disambiguating "addition" to the name, it's simply a more complete/detailed name. In both cases, the full names of those articles are subject to WP:NATURALNESS. QED: By extending the specific "exclusive of any added parenthetical disambiguation" to the vague "exclusive of any disambiguating additions", and interpreting various non-parenthetical forms of disambiguations (ones that are self-integral, natural-language, source, real-world phrases) as such "additions", you have painted yourself into a logic-trap corner from which there is no escape. So let's move on, if any of the rest of this actually needs to be addressed.

[To]pics relating to WP:NATURAL ... : Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant and Sarah Jane Brown – So what? There are always unusual, outlying cases where naming can be difficult to arrive at, and it completely normal for any of various parts of WP:AT to be considered in resolving those cases. This is why consensus discussion and common sense govern Wikipedia, not slavish adherence to the exact wording of policies and guidelines as if they are some kind of holy writ. As I said in the earlier thread, the existence of uncommon examples that illustrate an obscure case you're trying to rely on does not establish a norm. I'm not sure what lengthy quotation you were going to insert from WP:NCDAB, but I'm glad you forgot it; we don't need block quotes when pointers will suffice.

Can I also remind you [of some RMs involving WP:NATURAL]? – To what end? You've taken up a large chunk of talk page space to "remind" us of what we a;; already know, and have seemingly done so purely as an ad hominem tactic. Of course RMs involve WP:NATURALDIS, just as all the other segments of AT policy are relied upon in other RMs. We don't need lists of them dumped onto this talk page.

Every proposal of any kind on WP is proposed by someone, necessarily. Proposals do not come from thin air. The proponent, as such, is the "main supporter" of the proposal, by definition. If multiple proposals are consistent, such a person will also be the, or among the, "most regular supporter[s]" of the related proposals. This is all true across all topics of WP discussion. Please don't try to spin the normal and necessary into something impliedly suspicious.

Moving on, we've already had a lengthy discussion at your talk page about how it is logically impossible for WP:NATURALNESS to have actually meant what you seem to suppose it could have meant or what it could have been misinterpreted by some to mean, namely that "a great many of [the titles in question in your list above] might fail WP:NATURALNESS". [Aside: It's interesting that such an unsupportable argument was not actually made by anyone in those RM discussions, though an equally poor one was often proffered. The opposition was mostly based on the WP:Specialist style fallacy, that the supposed WP:COMMONNAME when accepting only primary/specialist sources (i.e. what is actually the WP:OFFICIALNAME) somehow required that only the breed name in isolation be used (e.g. "Siamese"), disambiguated with a parenthetical when needed, and that natural-language phrasing like "Siamese cat" was somehow forbidden by policy, despite also being attested in more general-audience sources. This argument failed dismally.] Whether you accept the logical proof I gave in your talk page discussion is actually irrelevant. We both already concurred that the wording at WP:NATURALNESS was poor because someone might potentially be confused, and it has now already been clarified. The matter is simply moot.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:01, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for changes and/or additions to shortcuts in WP:AT#Disambiguation

Its no biggie but I thought it might be helpful to:

• propose a move of the policy shortcuts: WP:NATURAL, WP:NATURALDIS and WP:NATDAB to the section of text that reads:

"Natural disambiguation: If it exists, choose an alternative name that the subject is also commonly called in English reliable sources, albeit not as commonly as the preferred-but-ambiguous title. Do not, however, use obscure or made-up names.

..."

Then, with or without the above, I would also like to:

• Propose a move of the shortcut: WP:COMMADIS to the text that presents:

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:COMMADIS}}Comma-separated disambiguation. With place names, if the disambiguating term is a higher-level administrative division, it is often separated using a comma instead of parentheses, as in Windsor, Berkshire (see Geographic names). Comma-separated disambiguation is sometimes also used in other contexts (e.g., Diana, Princess of Wales; see Names of royals and nobles). However, titles such as Tony Blair and Battle of Waterloo are preferred over alternatives such as "Blair, Anthony Charles Lynton" and "Waterloo, Battle of", in which a comma is used to change the natural ordering of the words."

I think that the displayed COMMADIS shortcut ref which, isn't policy/ guidance content, is best placed next to the text it links to.

However Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:COMMADIS shows that, at present, this shortcut has relatively little use (12 links) in comparison to results from: Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATURAL (~600 links), Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATURALDIS (~150-200 links) and Special:WhatLinksHere/Wikipedia:NATDAB (10 links}

• Propose the creation of a shortcut: WP:PARENTHETICAL so as to link to a text:

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:PARENTHETICAL}}Parenthetical disambiguation, i.e. adding a disambiguating term in parentheses after the ambiguous name: Wikipedia's standard disambiguation technique when none of the other solutions lead to an optimal article title."

I think that editors may more naturally refer to the "use of WP:PARENTHETICAL disambiguation" than to refer to the "use of disambiguation with WP:PARENTHESIS".

 

• Propose the creation of a shortcut: WP:DESCRIPT so as to link to a text:

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:DESCRIPT}} Descriptive name: where there is no acceptable set name for a topic, such that a title of our own conception is necessary, more latitude is allowed to form descriptive and unique titles."

 

• Propose the creation of a shortcut: WP:COMBINDIS so as to link to a text:

"{{anchor|Wikipedia:COMBINDIS}}Combinations of the above: exceptional, in most cases to be avoided per WP:CONCISE"

GregKaye 06:51, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• I support the gist of this idea, but we should be consistent, and use "somethingDIS" and "somethingDAB" shortcuts for all of these, not mix-and-match with different styles. Also, the conventional short form in English of "combination" is "combo"; "combin" doesn't mean anything to anyone. Next, {{anchor|Wikipedia:COMMADIS}} doesn't make any sense, because no one is going to link to [[Wikipedia:Article titles#Wikipedia:COMMADIS]] Anyway, I would support something like consistently having NATURALDIS/NATURALDAB, COMMADIS/COMMADAB, PARENDIS/PARENDAB, COMBODIS/COMBODAB, DESCRIPTDIS/DESCRIPTDAB. I would use these morphemes because they'll be memorable an intuitive ("paren" or "parens" is the common copyediting abbreviation of "parentheses" and "descript-" is the combining form of "describe").  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:35, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

I would take us in the other direction from what Greg proposes... and propose that we delete as many of these shortcuts as possible. The problem with creating shortcuts is that they can focus the reader on just one small sub-section of the policy (in this case, each outlining just one form of disambiguation) and the reader really needs to read the entire section.
When you focus the reader on just one sub-section (just one form of disambiguation) to the exclusion of the other options, the reader comes away with the idea that these are "rules" rather than options... it's important that editors read the entire section on disambiguation, and understand that these are options.

I would also suggest amending the text, to get rid of the confusing term "Natural Disambiguation". Doing this will prevent confusion with "Naturalness". I'm not wedded to any specific term, but suggest "Disambiguation by using alternative names" as a possibility. Blueboar (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Blueboar I thought that this might go one way or another. At the other extreme we could strip down to just presenting WP:NATURAL and either leave it at the top of the page or placing it on the same level as the policy to which it relates. To me it makes no sense to have WP:COMMADIS in the policy shortcut box as it is not a policy. I think, by this option, it is enough to state WP:NATURAL to be policy. To present three versions of the shortcut, when other options don't even get a mention, is overkill - but, again, this is no biggie. GregKaye 16:18, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

• You're mix-and-matching multiple, unrelated proposals, Blueboar.
  1. Oppose removing these sorts of shortcuts. Consensus has consistently been moving toward including more of them, across all policies and guidelines. This is because they are very useful for directing editors to the exact location of the rule/guidance in question, and this is important because our ruleset continues to grow in complexity over time as new disputes arise and codifiable resolutions to them are arrived at. Without them, a comment like "see WP:AT" is largely meaningless and unhelpful in a name [or whatever] debate, because no one is going to re-read a policy of this length to find what it is someone else is trying to cite as authoritative for their position in the debate. The problem that some individuals misuse these shortcut to try to focus inappropriate, out-of-context attention on one particular segment of a policy page is a user behavior problem, not a problem with our policies and guidelines, nor with our shortcut system. Direct, familiar analogy: The fact that some Christians quote biblical scripture out of context is a misleading way doesn't mean the problem is in the Bible or any edition's index and headings, but rather is indicative of an individual fool or manipulator, who is to be individually disproven with a more cogent argument.
  2. Oppose for now changing the name and wording of "natural disambiguation". WP:NATURALNESS has already been clarified so that it can no longer reasonably be confused in any way with WP:NATURALDIS. This change is less than one day old; give it a chance. If anyone is still confusing them 3 or 6 months from now, then let's revisit the issue. And "natural disambiguation" isn't automatically the problematic half of the equation; it's just as reasonable to rename "naturalness", (e.g. to "intuitiveness").

     As to the specific proposal here, "disambiguation by using alternative names" is tumid (we could drop "using" with no loss of meaning, and even shorten "alternative" to "alternate", or use "disambiguation by rewording", etc.). Worse, it's overly vague, and the phrase could easily apply to all forms of disambiguation. Worst, it misses the key point: The English-language naturalness in particular of naturally disambiguated titles is why they're preferable to parenthetic disambiguations. (Though not necessarily other kinds, e.g. comma-separated, in particular types of cases where those are in common usage; as I noted one thread higher up, comma-separated disambiguation is simply a variant of natural disambiguation when typical real-world usage is actually punctuated that way.) I realize you said "I'm not wedded to any specific term". My own suggestion of "intuitive" could be applied here, rather than to "naturalness", and I'm sure someone can come up with something else, too. The core concern is that we care about the natural-language quality, in English, of the title in all cases aside from tacked-on parenthetical disambiguators like "(author)" or "(river)", and the policy now makes this clearer than it did before.

     Nevertheless, one important point we cannot incidentally drop or muddle, but that some are very keen to undo or weaken, is the fact that the policy does clearly favor natural over parenthetic disambiguation. If we edit incautiously here just to "over-resolve" the former NATURALNESS vs NATURALDIS confusion (which frankly was only in the minds of a very small number of editors, approaching the singular), we'll create an unbelievable mess. It'll end up flooding WP:RM with a tsunami of WP:POINTy and tendentious mass renames launched by numerous parties, on no other basis than "Our time has come! AT doesn't prefer natural over parenthetic disambiguation any more! TO WAR!" This would be an even worse result than would normally happen upon a poorly-thought-out change to policy, because RM is not actually centralized discussion, it's just a centralized index of discussions, which would rage across the talk pages of thousands of articles, probably for years. Some similar discussion, just last year, sank to surprisingly nasty depths, and we have a responsibility to prevent that kind of editwarrior entrenchment from recurring in magnified form, especially as just some unintended side effect.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

     PS: The very fact that I was edit-conflicted while posting this, by someone dredging up, one thread higher up, a dispute about the very RM flamefest I'm referring to but which was resolved almost a year ago, is concrete evidence that the chaos I predict would commence immediately upon such a change.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:33, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request

Greetings! A proposal has been made at Talk:Hillary Rodham Clinton/April 2015 move request‎ to change the title of the article, Hillary Rodham Clinton to Hillary Clinton. This notification is provided because this is of interest to this project. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:37, 28 April 2015 (UTC)