BrownHairedGirl (talk | contribs) →RFC inadequate, bot not justified: @Impru20 |
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::::Another approach would be to analyse the WikiProj banners on the talk pages, and use them to build a list of projects to notify. That will be a longer list than the WP:countryname set, because it will include sub-national WikiProjects such as the US states--[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span><span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(-3deg)">Haired</span>Girl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 03:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
::::Another approach would be to analyse the WikiProj banners on the talk pages, and use them to build a list of projects to notify. That will be a longer list than the WP:countryname set, because it will include sub-national WikiProjects such as the US states--[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span><span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(-3deg)">Haired</span>Girl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 03:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
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:::::{{ping|BrownHairedGirl}} Happy to list it at CENT and any national WikiProjects; I think anything more is a bit OTT (especially as most other banners will be politics related, and all those projects were notified the first time round). Are you happy with this? [[User:Number 57|<span style="color: orange;">Number</span>]] [[User talk:Number 57|<span style="color: green;">5</span>]][[Special:Contributions/Number 57|<span style="color: blue;">7</span>]] 11:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
:::::{{ping|BrownHairedGirl}} Happy to list it at CENT and any national WikiProjects; I think anything more is a bit OTT (especially as most other banners will be politics related, and all those projects were notified the first time round). Are you happy with this? [[User:Number 57|<span style="color: orange;">Number</span>]] [[User talk:Number 57|<span style="color: green;">5</span>]][[Special:Contributions/Number 57|<span style="color: blue;">7</span>]] 11:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
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::::::{{yo|Number 57}} sorry for slow reply. I do think it is important to include the WikiProjects for at least some subnational entities, such as the US States and Scot/Eng/Wales/Norniron. For example, there is much discussion of Scottish political topics in [[WT:SCOT]] than in [[WP:POLUK]]. I just checked the categories for elections in Calfornia and Washington state, where there are resectively 678 and 196 relevant articles. Most of the articles are on non-federal topics, so a notification to the state WikiProject may stand a better chnace of reaching the editors involved. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span><span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(-3deg)">Haired</span>Girl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 14:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
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::{{u|BrownHairedGirl}}, I agree that turnout is important, but if only 20 people participate then that's what we have to go on. Have you notified any other groups? I do agree that there was not enough participation. Including {{u|BD2412}}'s and {{u|Awilley}}'s support brings the tally to '''15 for, 4 against''', and I'm not sure if {{u|Amakuru}} opposes the proposal or simply opposes moving them for now. [[User:Onetwothreeip|Onetwothreeip]] ([[User talk:Onetwothreeip|talk]]) 00:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
::{{u|BrownHairedGirl}}, I agree that turnout is important, but if only 20 people participate then that's what we have to go on. Have you notified any other groups? I do agree that there was not enough participation. Including {{u|BD2412}}'s and {{u|Awilley}}'s support brings the tally to '''15 for, 4 against''', and I'm not sure if {{u|Amakuru}} opposes the proposal or simply opposes moving them for now. [[User:Onetwothreeip|Onetwothreeip]] ([[User talk:Onetwothreeip|talk]]) 00:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
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:::{{yo|Onetwothreeip}} turnout was low because the notifications were wholly inadequate to the scale of the proposed changes. Rather than shrugging off the low turnout, the appropriate remedy is to re-open with wide notification and see where the consensus actually lands. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span><span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(-3deg)">Haired</span>Girl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
:::{{yo|Onetwothreeip}} turnout was low because the notifications were wholly inadequate to the scale of the proposed changes. Rather than shrugging off the low turnout, the appropriate remedy is to re-open with wide notification and see where the consensus actually lands. --[[User:BrownHairedGirl|<span style="color:#663200;">Brown</span><span style="display:inline-block;transform:rotate(-3deg)">Haired</span>Girl]] <small>[[User talk:BrownHairedGirl|(talk)]] • ([[Special:Contributions/BrownHairedGirl|contribs]])</small> 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC) |
Revision as of 14:27, 20 October 2018
Proposed change to election/referendum naming format
- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
I'd like to propose amending our naming format for elections/referendums to move the year to the front of the title; so, for example, French presidential election, 2017 would be 2017 French presidential election. I think this has several advantages:
- It brings election articles in line with the vast majority of other articles with years in the title
- It allows the article titles to be used in prose, as the current format cannot be used (one could say "the 2017 German federal election resulted in a hung parliament")
- It would make certain election articles titles more logical (for instance United States Senate election in Florida, 2018 would become 2018 United States Senate election in Florida
- It would make the titles of related articles more logical (for instance Fundraising in the United States presidential election, 2016 would become Fundraising in the 2016 United States presidential election)
- It would automatically sort elections by year in categories
I mentioned this a year ago at WP:E&R and a valid point was raised that currently you can start searching "French presidential election" and you get the whole list. This is an advantage, but as far as I can see, the only one. A way to keep this benefit is to still create redirects from these titles.
This will involve moving many thousands of articles (I will notify as many relevant WPs as I can find), so I propose that if this passes, a bot run is set up to do it. Cheers, Number 57 20:41, 6 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support. Although we've always done it this way, this proposal really does make a lot of sense. The Drover's Wife (talk) 01:55, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support though I'll point out that this would eliminate the somewhat convenient option to use a pipe trick to lop off the year in running text. Ibadibam (talk) 04:08, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose Elections should be primarily categorised by location rather than the year. The Australian federal election in 2013 is more similar to the Australian federal election in 2016 than the German federal election in 2013. Onetwothreeip (talk) 04:26, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
- Just to be clear, I'm saying that searching "French presidential election" and then getting the list is a very big advantage to the current format. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- As I noted above, this can be solved by having redirects. Cheers, Number 57 11:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- Would redirect actually be the entries that appear in the preliminary search results? I am very sceptical of that, it does not appear to be the case. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:13, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- As I noted above, this can be solved by having redirects. Cheers, Number 57 11:08, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- Just to be clear, I'm saying that searching "French presidential election" and then getting the list is a very big advantage to the current format. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:09, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support since it does read more naturally that way and is consistent with other temporal articles, though I am a bit tepid since it's been this way for so long. There are a handful of articles that have multiple years or months also in the title, which isn't a barrier to change but one thing to consider. I'm not sure how piping the links would be any different though. Reywas92Talk 05:28, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support WP:NC: passes naturalness, precision, conciseness and consistency. Passes recognizability, but not as good as the other four characteristics (most elections are just called "Fooian <whatever> election" on the approach to it, then is appended by the year later on). The current convention feels as if the title is a disambiguation, which, again, can be true if you emphasize a currently ongoing election in some cases, but resolves itself in time. Howard the Duck (talk) 08:09, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
CommentSupport I guess the proposed format could, in general, adhere better to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, and specifically to WP:NCE (in fact, I don't know why the naming conventions on elections are in NCGAL rather than in NCE when they are treated as events elsewhere (i.e. this)). However, I am concerned as to what should be the format for years with a plurality of elections (February 1974 United Kingdom general election and October 1974 United Kingdom general election would feel awkward as article titles, for example). Impru20talk 15:16, 7 September 2018 (UTC)- I think it would be as you suggest. I guess these examples possibly appear awkward as we're not used to seeing titles like that. However, that would be how the elections would usually be referred to, and the articles themselves already start with that exact wording format (plus it matches the related articles February 1974 Dissolution Honours and October 1974 Dissolution Honours. Number 57 18:57, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
- Strong support (Summoned by bot) Long overdue. I've been thinking about why it wasn't like this before. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs) 04:42, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support Not sure that this title format is quite as nice aesthetically, but it's definitely an improvement in naturalness, which is one of the relevant criteria. There's a marginal improvement in concision, and it adds something to syntactic consistency with "Next ____ general election" articles. Ralbegen (talk) 11:53, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose The election is the main topic of the article, not the year. Hence I feel it makes sense to use the year as a point of differentiation after the title of the actual event.Kiwichris (talk) 06:09, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support, as the more logical format. I've created accidental redlinks and links to redirects quite often while writing, because the current format is counter-intuitive. Vanamonde (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
- Oppose Sources that put the name first are usually those from the country involved, and everyone will understand whivh 1974 election is being discussed. That's not the case in WP. DGG ( talk ) 05:28, 14 September 2018 (UTC)
- Strongly Oppose Putting the date first in any title, of anything, makes no sense. I have never seen an article in any medium that put the date first. Why not? Because it makes no sense. Peter K Burian (talk) 13:28, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
- @Peter K Burian: It's standard Wikipedia practice. Have you not noticed that almost all our titles with dates in have the year at the start? 2018 FIFA World Cup, 2018–19 Premier League, 2018 Atlantic hurricane season, 2017 Las Vegas shooting, 2013 Egyptian coup d'état etc etc. Number 57 16:30, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
- Of course, the date is often essential but not as the first "word" of a title. This is the norm and it makes sense: Canadian federal election, 2015 Peter K Burian (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- But it's not the norm, as has been demonstrated above and below by Impru20 (However, your citing of the Canadian election example makes me wonder whether you have misunderstood the purpose of the discussion – the proposal is to move all election articles, not just one I mentioned, so the Canadian one would be moved too. The current title of that specific example is therefore irrelevant in the context of this discussion as all election titles are currently at that type of naming format). Number 57 15:10, 18 September 2018 (UTC)
- Of course, the date is often essential but not as the first "word" of a title. This is the norm and it makes sense: Canadian federal election, 2015 Peter K Burian (talk) 23:28, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- It is more than practice, actually. It is an actual Wikipedia naming convention. Impru20talk 18:22, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support - it'll reduce the amount of piping around links to the articles. Cabayi (talk) 09:55, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- Support - I came to this debate somewhat neutral. However I've read through these votes and have realised that it would make more sense to be "Year Event" than "Event Year". I get that people might want to search for a specific event by name, but the year being at the front would direct them to their search a bit quicker than it being at the end. As above, also, there are already sporting and cultural events which have the year at the front so we'd be putting things in line with that too. doktorb wordsdeeds 16:41, 17 September 2018 (UTC)
- (Summoned by bot) Support — Would reduce the amount piping (per Cabayi and seems more natural and better to me.
Regards, SshibumXZ (talk · contribs). 15:04, 18 September 2018 (UTC) - Mostly oppose, except to your point 4, which I do think would be better. Otherwise I prefer the current convention. Nevermore27 (talk) 18:38, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
- WP:BADNAC. Contentious. Bad close. That was not a consensus. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:10, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
Disambiguation form and capitalization
The issues raised in Talk:Dan Sullivan (American senator)#Requested move 8 September 2018 may be of interest. Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 02:17, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
RFC inadequate, bot not justified
I am disappointed with the RFC above, for several reasons:
- Only 16 editors !voted, 11 in favour to five opposes.
- Given those numbers, a very small number of further oppose !vote would have pushed this RFC into no consensus territory. It is therefore a marginal decision, inadequate for its scope
- While the majority is clear, that is very low participation for a decision which affects 35,226 articles. I see that @Number 57 commendably notified a few WikiProjects such as WikiProject Elections and Referendums and WikiProject_Politics_of_the_United_Kingdom, the reach was low -- most countries do not have politics-specific projects, and most of the editors who work on elections in specific countries do not frequent the meta-projects. Most country WikiProjects were not notified (see e.g. WT:IE and WT:FRANCE). And as far as I can see, this proposal was not listed at WP:CENT.
- It is now being proposed to use a bot to mass-move all 35,226 articles without any WP:RM discussions. (See Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot) This breaches WP:NCGAL's status as a guideline, which like every other guideline says prominently at the top that
is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply
. Bypassing WP:RM on an industrial scale precludes discussion of exceptions. - The RFC did not consider issues such as local usage, nor the cases where the current title is not "Foo election, year": e.g. United Kingdom general election, 1918 (Ireland) or Irish general election, February 1982.
- In the case of United Kingdom general election, 1918 (Ireland), there is a clash of two constitutional viewpoints: the Irish perspective on the constitutional status of that election is v difft to the British perspective, so much care is needed to avoid upsetting finely-balanced work to preserve neutrality.
- Irish general election, February 1982 and similar titles such as United Kingdom general election, October 1974 do not sort automatically by date no matter which way around they are arranged. The RFC didn't consider the extent of that exception.
So I think that this RFC was inadequate for such a wide-ranging change: not enough notifications, not enough participation, and inadequate consideration of exceptions.
I also see no consensus to use a bot to bypass WP:RM's consensus-forming process on 35,226 articles. I will now post at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot to oppose the use of the bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:56, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- PS I should stress that I am not suggesting any bad faith by anyone involved. Just excessive haste and insufficient consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:57, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- PPS I have just noticed that in the last sentence of the nomination, the nominator did mention the use of a bot. However, it seems I was not the only person to miss this: no other particpant in the RFC even mentioned the word "bot". And the WikiProject notifications did not mention unleasing a bot to move 35,226 articles.
So there is no explcit consensus to use a bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:07, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- PPS I have just noticed that in the last sentence of the nomination, the nominator did mention the use of a bot. However, it seems I was not the only person to miss this: no other particpant in the RFC even mentioned the word "bot". And the WikiProject notifications did not mention unleasing a bot to move 35,226 articles.
Just to make it clear, as me and you just had a discussion on a different topic, I came here since you posted this in the Village Pump which is on my watchlist. Just a coincidence. That said, I've re-read the RfC and it seems fine. 17 participants with 12 voting support (you didn't count the nom) are pretty good numbers. Most discussions I see get 10 and less people involved. The discussion was open for over a month, so no haste. Note that one of the opposing rationals was pretty close to WP:IDONTLIKEIT territory (except to your point 4, which I do think would be better. Otherwise I prefer the current convention
. The bot process was stated clearly in the proposal and not hidden. If I were to !vote here, I wouldn't have commented on its use either, as it isn't the heart of the issue. Sending 35,226 articles to WP:RM would just cripple that page and there is no need, as the guideline change has been discussed here, and any WP:LOCALCON should not override it. With all that said, I see a clear consensus, in a well written RfC that was open for enough time. No need to re-open this issue. --Gonnym (talk) 06:50, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Gonnym: One nom and 12 supports sufficient to bypass RM for >35,000 articles?
- When none of the limited notifications even mentioned bot renaming? Wow. Just wow. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:46, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
I was one of the opposing votes, and I would now change my vote. That makes it 13 votes for and 4 votes against. I became more neutral reading the arguments of others, and if I was a deciding vote I would absolutely vote in favour. I did not think this would be necessary given the strong outcome for support, but given the circumstances I !vote support.
It is reasonable to expect this matter to have more people considering it than the seventeen that did. However, this cannot be obstructed simply because of the low turnout. If this doesn't get more opposing votes in a week, the proposal should certainly be carried. I understood the use of a bot to be very clear. Otherwise my main objection would have been that the change would not be necessary compared to the work that would have to be done. In the other opposing votes there was no mention of that, which shows an understanding that a bot would be used. Most importantly, this was part of the proposal which had overwhelming support.
There isn't really a problem here for elections with irregular titles. If any problem arises, a local consensus can decide on that, or another major consensus. This process shouldn't be obstructed by potential minor problems like those. The vast majority of the articles affected are going to be small, so it's not as if 30,000 commonly viewed articles are being altered. Most importantly, where is the discussion going to be now? It seems quite messy. Onetwothreeip (talk) 11:15, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- Low turnout matters a lot, especially when so many articles are to be renamed.
- The level of notifications was higher than usual, but it was wholly inadequate to the scale of the changes proposed. How can anyone possibly assert that for example there is a consensus to rename the 860 affected articles under Category:Elections in Ireland when a) no Irish WikiProject was notified, b) no articles have been tagged in any way, c) there was no notice at WP:CENT, and d) the notifications which were made did not even mention a bot?
- I don't believe there was any ill-intent by the nominator. But huge changes need broad consensus, and that has not been demonstrated here.
- Fine, you would now change your !vote. But that still leaves only 13 editors supporting moving 35,000 articles.
- I am personally undecided on the merits. But I do know that making such a big change on the basis of so little support or substantive discussion is a very bad idea. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:00, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: What do you actually want to happen now? There are four discussions in separate places on the same thing with no clear focus as to what needs to happen for this to move forward. Do you want to reopen the original RfC for more input/explanation of what would happen with certain titles, put out wider notifications and put the bot request on hold? Number 57 12:16, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Number 57: I'm afraid that the lack of focus is an inevitable consequence of moving directly from inadequate RFC to technical discussions at BRFA which proceeded even when concerns were raised at an early stage about the inadequate consensus. The BRFA should have been halted at that point pending wider consensus-building.
- However, we are we are, and I do appreciate the courteous and constructive nature of your response here, which looks for ways forward. Thank you for this effort to regain focus.
- Yes, I would like the RFC reopened, with a) very much wider notification, explicitly mentioning the bot; b) the issue of Bot use to be given a separate discussion area in the RFC, because there may editors who support the principle but have reservations/objections about the use of a single-pass bot to do the lot without apparent planning for notification.
- I would be v disappointed if the substantive RFC was not re-opened, but in that case there should still be an RFC on the use of the bot. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:34, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: I'll reopen the discussion and provide a list of examples of how the different types of articles would look and start a separate section about the bot. Where do you suggest it is advertised this time? Number 57 18:11, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, this is quite ridiculous. A low-turnout RFC on an obscure naming convention subpage should not be the basis of moves of thousands of high-profile election articles. I oppose the moving of these pages. — Amakuru (talk) 22:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- I started moving these manually. Although a bot would be better, if none is approved I figure I can do a thousand a day for 35 days and be done that way. I see no great problem with the RFC, either with the level of participation or the close. The discussion was appropriately publicized, and was open for an extended time. The number of articles is large but the task is ministerial, and redirects will be left in every case. Had I been a participant in that discussion, I probably would have supported the proposal (including a bot, which is just common sense when the number of pages to be moved is large). Had I been the closer of that discussion, I would have closed it with the same outcome as WBG, although perhaps with a bit more explanation (because I am, obviously, long-winded). bd2412 T 22:53, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- Coming here from my watchlist out of curiosity. I too would have supported the moves had I known about the discussion, but wouldn't mind seeing this temporarily reopened for broader community input. ~Awilley (talk) 23:05, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Now that the naming convention has been established, it needs to be tested at an WP:RM, which is the established venue for requesting moves. Start an RM at a high profile page such as United States presidential election, 2016, as a test case. If there's consensus there to make the move, then that would give the green light to move all the others. — Amakuru (talk) 23:06, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- I don't see the necessity of an RM to conform titles to a title policy amended by consensus. I would expect that if such an RM was carried out, the same people who participated in the policy discussion would participate in the RM, to the same outcome. On the other hand, there is no deadline, so if someone wants to initiate such a process, the whole process will move forward in a week or two. bd2412 T 23:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BD2412: as you know, there is ongoing discussion both here and at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot about whether the RFC was sufficient, and the RFC nominator has already offered to re-open it.
- Please can you desist from moving pages until a clear consensus has been reached on how to proceed. Mass WP:BOLD moves just add an extra layer of complexity to a situation which is already complex enough. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:21, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- Sure. bd2412 T 03:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- Thanks. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:10, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- Sure. bd2412 T 03:57, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- I don't see the necessity of an RM to conform titles to a title policy amended by consensus. I would expect that if such an RM was carried out, the same people who participated in the policy discussion would participate in the RM, to the same outcome. On the other hand, there is no deadline, so if someone wants to initiate such a process, the whole process will move forward in a week or two. bd2412 T 23:09, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- I started moving these manually. Although a bot would be better, if none is approved I figure I can do a thousand a day for 35 days and be done that way. I see no great problem with the RFC, either with the level of participation or the close. The discussion was appropriately publicized, and was open for an extended time. The number of articles is large but the task is ministerial, and redirects will be left in every case. Had I been a participant in that discussion, I probably would have supported the proposal (including a bot, which is just common sense when the number of pages to be moved is large). Had I been the closer of that discussion, I would have closed it with the same outcome as WBG, although perhaps with a bit more explanation (because I am, obviously, long-winded). bd2412 T 22:53, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Number 57: thanks. Given the scope, I suggest it should be advertised on WP:CENT.
- I would also like to see it notified on the most relevant WikiProject of each country with articles within the scope of this proposal. In most cases that will be WP:countryname.
- Yes, I know that is a lot of notifications. In most circumstances, it would be seen as spamming. But the proposal is for this to be the last chance for discussion on a very big lots of article moves, so I think that this degree of notifications is appropriate.
- Another approach would be to analyse the WikiProj banners on the talk pages, and use them to build a list of projects to notify. That will be a longer list than the WP:countryname set, because it will include sub-national WikiProjects such as the US states--BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:02, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: Happy to list it at CENT and any national WikiProjects; I think anything more is a bit OTT (especially as most other banners will be politics related, and all those projects were notified the first time round). Are you happy with this? Number 57 11:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Number 57: sorry for slow reply. I do think it is important to include the WikiProjects for at least some subnational entities, such as the US States and Scot/Eng/Wales/Norniron. For example, there is much discussion of Scottish political topics in WT:SCOT than in WP:POLUK. I just checked the categories for elections in Calfornia and Washington state, where there are resectively 678 and 196 relevant articles. Most of the articles are on non-federal topics, so a notification to the state WikiProject may stand a better chnace of reaching the editors involved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:27, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: Happy to list it at CENT and any national WikiProjects; I think anything more is a bit OTT (especially as most other banners will be politics related, and all those projects were notified the first time round). Are you happy with this? Number 57 11:11, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- Yes, this is quite ridiculous. A low-turnout RFC on an obscure naming convention subpage should not be the basis of moves of thousands of high-profile election articles. I oppose the moving of these pages. — Amakuru (talk) 22:45, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: I'll reopen the discussion and provide a list of examples of how the different types of articles would look and start a separate section about the bot. Where do you suggest it is advertised this time? Number 57 18:11, 19 October 2018 (UTC)
- BrownHairedGirl, I agree that turnout is important, but if only 20 people participate then that's what we have to go on. Have you notified any other groups? I do agree that there was not enough participation. Including BD2412's and Awilley's support brings the tally to 15 for, 4 against, and I'm not sure if Amakuru opposes the proposal or simply opposes moving them for now. Onetwothreeip (talk) 00:05, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Onetwothreeip: turnout was low because the notifications were wholly inadequate to the scale of the proposed changes. Rather than shrugging off the low turnout, the appropriate remedy is to re-open with wide notification and see where the consensus actually lands. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not shrugging off the low turnout, but it's possible that expanding the notifications won't dramatically increase the turnout. What groups do you think should be notified? Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Onetwothreeip: we won't know about turnout unless we try. I'm not making any predictions either way ... but it is important to give involved editors the opportunity to contribute.
- For where to post notifications, see my reply[1] to Number 57, currently three paras up. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- So that's one on WP:CENT and then ~200, one for each country? I read what you said to Number 57 prior to my question, but it's not very clear to me. Again I'm completely in support of trying to get more voices involved. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:58, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- If just the countries are notified, I think it would be about 200.
- If a notification was sent to all projects which have their WPbanner on the talk page of a dated election article, then I guesstimate that the number of projects would probably be more like 500–1000 (because it would include some former countries and many sub-national geographical WikiProjects such as cities, US states, Canadian provinces, English counties, the 4 nations of the UK etc).
- That would be a lot of notifications, but even 1000 notifications would amount to only one notification for every 35 pages which would be moved. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 06:09, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- So you're not suggesting we notify 200 projects, you're suggesting we notify 1000. The majority of these articles are probably American, British/Irish, Canadian and Australian. Let's not exaggerate the importance of these 35,000 articles, the vast majority of those are very minor articles. Although if it were a bot making all these notifications there would be no problem, but obviously we shouldn't be waiting around for 1000 projects to deliberate over this proposal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Onetwothreeip: (sigh) Please take care to read what I wrote, and please do not misrepresent me. I suggested two options: one which I think would be about 200 notifications, and one which I think would be about 1000.
- Also please note that I did not and do not suggest that we
wait around for 1000 projects to deliberate over this proposal
. I am proposing that we notify the WikiProjects, so that their members can join in the RFC if they want to. - As to your assumption that
he majority of these articles are probably American, British/Irish, Canadian and Australian
, I would suggest that you do some actual research before making assumptions. The sample checks which I did showed dozens of articles even for countries where en.wp's coverage is sparse. For example, 25 in Ghana, 77 in Iran, 18 in Greenland, 50 in Ecuador, 860 in Ireland. The articles themsleves may be weak, but the topics are usually very significant for the countries concerned: the sparseness of coverage means that an election article in an under-reported country is likely to be about major national topic such a presidential or parliamentary election, and to be ranked as mid- or high-importance. It would be outrageous for a few dozen mid- or high-importance articles on a country to be renamed without any notification to editors working on those countries. --06:44, 20 October 2018 (UTC)- I don't think I've misrepresented you. When you said it would only be 35 pages per notification, that seems like you may support the idea. I admit that estimating how many election articles are from each country was speculation, but due to federalism and the demographics of English Wikipedia, these articles are heavily skewed to those countries. I didn't suggest you wanted to wait around for 1000 projects to deliberate at all, I was assuming you would agree with that. We're obviously not going to have a voice from every country, so some countries will be unrepresented in any reasonable request for consensus. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- It looks to me that this has a snowball's chance in hell of not passing through anyway; the more people gets involved, the more support the proposal seems to have. Arguments exposed are also heavily in favour of support (with references to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, which is an actual WP policy; or WP:NCE, which is the actual guideline on events, and elections are a type of event which, for some—as of yet, unexplained—reason are not included within), whereas oppose !votes are mostly based on the WP:IDONTLIKEIT-sort of arguments (note that consensus is obtained through the quality of arguments, not just quantity, and it is clear here that both quality and quantity heavily favors the proposal getting through). Finally, the bot issue was indeed notified in the RfC by the nom, which is why I (who was initially a reluctant participant, then moved to support) did not brought up the issue of there being a whole lot of articles to be moved (which is the most serious argument I can think of to oppose the proposal). No one else objected, either. So, is it really worth it to get through the whole process again? Impru20talk 08:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Impru20: maybe you are right that a re-run would endorse. Or maybe not. Unless we reach out beyond the ~3 dozen editors who have been involved so far, we will not know. I have seen many RFCs where the balance of opinion has changed massively once participation increases significantly.
- If, as you expect, the outcome of a re-run is a clear endorsement, then this vast set of moves is more likely to proceed without too much drama.
- However, there are several things which I hope would happen in any re-run:
- more scrutiny of the nominator's assertions, such by the one picked up by several editors that this will reduce the amount of piping around links to the articles. From my experience of creating thousands of articles on elections and politicians, and editing tens of thousands more, it is very rare for the proposed year-first title to be usable in running text, because the context nearly always makes part of the title superfluous.
- more participation from the editors with most experience of working on election topics. (For example, I see no sign so far of any input from the editors who have made significant contributions to UK & Ireland election coverage). I do not want to predict what they might bring to the discussion, but familiarity with source material can markedly change outcomes, as seen e.g. at Talk:United Kingdom general election, 1832–33#Requested_move_18_October_2018 — that is a nom by me proposing reversion of a move driven by editors who appear not to know the topic well, and it is that discussion which led me here when someone mentioned this RFC
- More detailed consideration of exceptional cases. e.g. does Delaware's at-large congressional district special election, 1805 really work as 1905 Delaware's at-large congressional district special election? Sounds clunky to me. Might not something like 1905 special election in Delaware's at-large congressional district be better? The discussion above concluded without any systematic effort to identify such cases
- Identification of sets of articles which might benefit from more scrutiny. The preliminary analysis work done by the v capable and v through @TheSandDoctor has already broken down the list and identified patterns. Those patterns should be discussed as part of the RFC, not just relegated to the engine room of implementation at BRFA.
- There is no deadline, so delay does no harm. Excessive haste runs the risk of huge, sprawling disputes ... and even if the only benefit of further scrutiny is more comunity input into the bot's modus operandi, that will be very helpful. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 09:51, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: But isn't that the point of WP:SNOW? If a result is going to be clear whatever the case, why should we be required to go through the whole process anyway? Besides, a higher turnout is not even guaranteed to happen, nor is it required under current RfC rules. Quality and quantity of arguments in this case are clearly in favor of the change; the only difference we could conceivably see from an higher turnout RfC is in the event of some sort of massive pile-on oppose !votes, which even so (which I do not see as likely anyway) would still mean the change being passed due to the arguments' quality. We should remind that WP:NAMINGCRITERIA is an actual policy. The naming convention previous to the RfC goes against it, and no sensible argument has been brought as to why it should remain like that. Specially when, after backtracking the origins of such a convention, you find out that it was unilaterally added to WP:AT in 2004 without any discussion, then similarly moved to WP:NCGAL in 2009 (despite WP:NCE already existing since 2006). You could find some minor and mostly old discussions (with an even lower turnout than the aforementioned RfC) which revolve on the formatting of the year at the end of the title (not on whether it should be brought forward), but nothing else.
- Points 1, 2, 3 and 4 you bring revolve merely on technical issues, not policy issues. Points 2 and 3 in particular could maybe need a RfC of their own to address their specificities within the naming convention, but these are really situations that could happen under both the former and the new proposals and are not incompatible with either. Point 4 revolves on the wholly technical issue of how should the moves be carried out (again, not an argument for re-opening a RfC on how the convention should be, unless you try to argue that we should not propose changes in WP conventions and policies based, not on opportunity, but on how difficult would these be to implement). And if something has been made clear with point 1, is that the proposed convention does better than the former with avoiding link piping, not that it addresses all situations (not a policy-based argument either, anyway). None of these are arguments that could stop the change from succeeding as per NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE. An actual reasoning as to why the particular naming convention for elections should go against these two should be given, but this has not been done.
- As far as I can tell, the practice of using the year at the end for election articles comes just because it was done like this in the early 2000s, yet has not been revised or discussed ever since despite the clear evolution in WP policies and guidelines (particularly the aforementioned NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE), to which it has come in conflict with.
- If anything, I think that any new RfC should address the usefulness of having this naming convention for elections included in NGAL—which is the naming convention for government departments and legislation—instead of in NCE—which is the one for events. I see that as a more sensible issue. Impru20talk 10:38, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Impru20: I think we are probably going to have to agree to diasgree on most of that.
- First, I really don't like the idea of applying WP:SNOW based on the response to such limited notification and such low participation by topic experts.
- And secondly, while I dispute your characterisation of my 4 points as technical, I think that's ultimately not important. There clearly are issues to address on sevral fronts, and if we are going to invite editors here in the hopoe of better participation here it seems invidious to put the central decision out of bounds. Better to just put everything on the table, and see where we get to. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 11:46, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @BrownHairedGirl: Firstly, if you see this as a "low participation" and "limited notification" RfC, I would like to hear what is your vision on how the previous naming convention on elections was achieved (namely, unilaterally and with little to no discussion on the actual year's placement in the title, the spotted divergence with NAMINGCRITERIA and NCE, etc). Indeed, this is a problem which has been around for years, ultimately showing how the convention of putting the year at the end brings more issues than it solves. But it was never properly addressed until now.
- Secondly, the characterization of your points as technical is, indeed, ultimately not important. What I wanted to convey is that none of your points is actually a policy-based reason for opposing (or supporting, btw) the proposed change. There could be issues to address "on several fronts", but none your points is actually relevant to the actual proposal; and of these four, I only see two (namely, points 2 and 3) as truly meriting further input in connection with the naming convention's development. Precisely, because you are trying to link the ultimate decision on the change to these issues, I am not particularly supportive of re-opening the RfC, as we would just going around in circles for no meaningful reason as these could be discussed separately. But if we are going to do that, then I will also request that the issue on whether this naming convention belongs in NCGAL or in NCE be brought into discussion as well, as I think that is a much more related and sensible front to this issue. If we are going to cover all fronts at once, we should also address such an anomaly of a particular type of event being covered in an entirely unrelated naming convention article. Impru20talk 12:13, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Impru20: I haven't tried to form a view about where the guidance (whatever it is) should ultimately be placed. So if you want to add that to the mix, fine.
- But I am bemused by your willingness to write so mnay words about why you think we shouldn't have a discussion. That usually indicates to me that a discussion si indeed needed. So it would be much more productive to save the words for the substantive discussion, lest this page turn into en.wp's version of 1990s Northern Ireland politics, where the major ongoing news story was of the various political actors possibly being engaged in "talks about talks"[2], and sometimes even negotiations about the format for "talks about talks". I used to muse about how many layers of recursion could develop before everyone involved disappeared into a black hole. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:54, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
I am bemused by your willingness to write so mnay words about why you think we shouldn't have a discussion. That usually indicates to me that a discussion si indeed needed
Or you could view it the other way around. We could find ourselves bemused of a single person writing so many words in order to force a new discussion despite a very clear consensus having emerged from a one month-long RfC with so many arguments exposed. But I will not try to make that obvious to everyone; I just wanted to point out that your reasonings for re-opening the RfC would actually be arguments for having specific RfCs on the issues you bring, not for re-opening a RfC with a clear consensus. Nothing else, since the RfC's nom did indeed agree to re-open it. Impru20talk 14:03, 20 October 2018 (UTC)- @Impru20: You think that an RFC with 16 participants has somehow produced a
a very clear consensus
on the fate of 35k articles. We evidnetly have very different concepts of clarity, so let's leave it at that. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:16, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Impru20: You think that an RFC with 16 participants has somehow produced a
- It looks to me that this has a snowball's chance in hell of not passing through anyway; the more people gets involved, the more support the proposal seems to have. Arguments exposed are also heavily in favour of support (with references to WP:NAMINGCRITERIA, which is an actual WP policy; or WP:NCE, which is the actual guideline on events, and elections are a type of event which, for some—as of yet, unexplained—reason are not included within), whereas oppose !votes are mostly based on the WP:IDONTLIKEIT-sort of arguments (note that consensus is obtained through the quality of arguments, not just quantity, and it is clear here that both quality and quantity heavily favors the proposal getting through). Finally, the bot issue was indeed notified in the RfC by the nom, which is why I (who was initially a reluctant participant, then moved to support) did not brought up the issue of there being a whole lot of articles to be moved (which is the most serious argument I can think of to oppose the proposal). No one else objected, either. So, is it really worth it to get through the whole process again? Impru20talk 08:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- I don't think I've misrepresented you. When you said it would only be 35 pages per notification, that seems like you may support the idea. I admit that estimating how many election articles are from each country was speculation, but due to federalism and the demographics of English Wikipedia, these articles are heavily skewed to those countries. I didn't suggest you wanted to wait around for 1000 projects to deliberate at all, I was assuming you would agree with that. We're obviously not going to have a voice from every country, so some countries will be unrepresented in any reasonable request for consensus. Onetwothreeip (talk) 07:41, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- So you're not suggesting we notify 200 projects, you're suggesting we notify 1000. The majority of these articles are probably American, British/Irish, Canadian and Australian. Let's not exaggerate the importance of these 35,000 articles, the vast majority of those are very minor articles. Although if it were a bot making all these notifications there would be no problem, but obviously we shouldn't be waiting around for 1000 projects to deliberate over this proposal. Onetwothreeip (talk) 06:24, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- So that's one on WP:CENT and then ~200, one for each country? I read what you said to Number 57 prior to my question, but it's not very clear to me. Again I'm completely in support of trying to get more voices involved. Onetwothreeip (talk) 05:58, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- I'm not shrugging off the low turnout, but it's possible that expanding the notifications won't dramatically increase the turnout. What groups do you think should be notified? Onetwothreeip (talk) 03:35, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
- @Onetwothreeip: turnout was low because the notifications were wholly inadequate to the scale of the proposed changes. Rather than shrugging off the low turnout, the appropriate remedy is to re-open with wide notification and see where the consensus actually lands. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 03:29, 20 October 2018 (UTC)
Guideline under discussion
Note that I have just tagged[3] the guideline as "under discussion", while discussions are underway above about whether the RFC adequately established a broad consensus. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:47, 20 October 2018 (UTC)