FYI, I have made a policy suggestion at [[WP:VPP#File naming policy and renaming activity]] concerning the need to be able to rename non-English/non-Latin file names to English, and to be able to apply NAMINGCRITERIA to filenames. -- [[Special:Contributions/76.65.128.222|76.65.128.222]] ([[User talk:76.65.128.222|talk]]) 04:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
FYI, I have made a policy suggestion at [[WP:VPP#File naming policy and renaming activity]] concerning the need to be able to rename non-English/non-Latin file names to English, and to be able to apply NAMINGCRITERIA to filenames. -- [[Special:Contributions/76.65.128.222|76.65.128.222]] ([[User talk:76.65.128.222|talk]]) 04:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)
== RfC: Interpretation of WP:COMMONNAME ==
Recently I have noted that some editors evoke WP:COMMONNAME in move discussions to suggest that most common layman's usage (as determined through recognizability and usage in general public, ngram results, google hits, etc.) trumps the most common usage within the field of expertise that relates to the article topic (the sources that would be reliable for writing the article). This RfC asks you to provide your opinion and arguments about whether WP:COMMONNAME should be interpreted as an injunction to follow layman's usage if it conflicts with expert usage, and whether you think current policy should be clarified in this regard.
===Survey: ===
#'''Comment''' I think this interpretation of policy is incorrect and problematic because it leads to situations in which a title can be divorced from the usage in reliable sources (e.g. all the reliable sources use one title, non-reliable sources and/or general usage uses another - so we adopt the latter in spite of all the reliable sources using the former). I think that this interpretation conflicts with the passus in WP:COMMONNAME saying that "Though official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred." I take this to mean that common name tells us to judge which title is more common through using the sources that are reliable for writing about the topic, not that we must blindly follow layman's usage. Even so, because of its apparent liability to this misunderstanding, I think we should '''amend policy''' to say clearly that assessments of what is the COMMONNAME should be based on the reliable sources for the topic, not on general usage frequency in the wider public. I don't consider this a change to policy, but a clarification of the originally intended policy. [[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 19:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
#'''Comment'''. I'm not sure a hard-and-fast rule here would be helpful or address any known problem. Sometimes we should eschew common usage which is inexact or too informal, even if it is the most common (e.g. "correction fluid" not "Tipex"). But neither is esoteric expertese desirable in titling (e.g. "orangutan" not "pongo"). Maybe the OP could provide examples of where they think problems can arise. [[User:FormerIP|Formerip]] ([[User talk:FormerIP|talk]]) 20:08, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
:::It can arise for example in relation to names of historical persons or ethnic groups that were previously known by an incorrect, mangled or derogatory name but where historians or ethnologists have since adopted another convention - often the earlier name lives on in popular works and things named after the earlier name and will have higher frequencies of overall usage even when they no longer appear in recent literature about the subjects. I am of course coming from a specific discussion that I have in mind but I am not going to link to it because I want this to be a more general discussion of policy, not about that specific case.[[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 20:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' - WP:COMMONNAME is not ''about'' laymen vs specialists. When the policy uses the word "common" it is talking about ''frequency'' of usage, not the academic status of the person using it. COMMONNAME calls for an examination of all reliable sources (specialist and lay). We are looking to see the frequency of usage in ''reliable'' sources that discuss the topic, ''regardless'' of whether those sources are "lay" or "specialist". If it is clear that one term is used significantly more frequently than other terms, we use that term in our articles. We don't actually care whether that term comes from "laymen" or "specialists" (and it is important to note that sometimes the specialist term actually ''can be'' used more frequently... the prime example is in our flora articles... where layman's names for flowers is very localized, but the "scientific" name is universal).
:Now, ''when usage is mixed'', and a true COMMONNAME can '''not''' be determined, I would certainly give more ''weight'' to specialist's terms than to laymen's terms... and that weight might make a good tie breaker. But the point is that we don't give an ''automatic'' preference to either. [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 20:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
::I disagree with your notion that WP:COMMONNAME is ''about'' frequency - it is about frequency within the domain of relevant knowledge and it weighs frequency against a number of other concerns (I also disagree with the idea of reliable lay sources - at least in my field there is no such thing). [[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 23:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
:::I believe newspapers, for example, would be reliable lay sources. It’s not uncommon for the reporter of a story to ''not'' be a highly educated expert on the subject of the story. —[[User:Frungi|Frungi]] ([[User talk:Frungi|talk]]) 01:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
::::Ah, true for some topics news could be considered a reliable source. Not for history topics though.[[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 01:32, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' – while I agree that [[WP:COMMONNAME]] is widely abused and inappropriately "evoked", I don't think trying to make it more prescriptive will help. It is just one strategy in support of recognizability and naturalness. Sometimes a layman's term is more natural or recognizable than a specialist's term, but we deal with those in a variety of ways in different domains, sometimes leaning one way or the other. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon|talk]]) 21:17, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' – there is a need to clarify the way that [[WP:COMMONNAME]] should be used, but this isn't it. The subsection title is "Use commonly {{em|recognizable}} names". It expands on {{em|one}} of the five criteria, recognizability, to be balanced by editors in choosing an article title. The problem, as I see it, is that some editors interpret "COMMONNAME" as trumping the other four criteria, regardless of how they decide on what is "common". I agree with Dicklyon: trying to be more prescriptive isn't the answer. [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 22:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
:::Well... to quibble COMMONNAME isn't ''just'' a way to determine Recognizability... it helps to determine Naturalness as well (since the most Recognizable name is ''also'' likely to be considered the most natural). That's why it is such a good tool for determining the best article title, it hits what are usually considered the two most important of the five principles. [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 23:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
::::"Usually considered" by whom? Not by me. The most important should be Precision. When editors choose common but ambiguous titles we end up with more and more article titles with parenthesised disambiguation, which helps no-one as far as I can see, and certainly doesn't lead to Naturalness. [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 08:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' - COMMONNAME isnt a trump card, its to be weighed up against other options, and alot of other things come into play, such as: ambiguity, inaccuracy, non-neutrality, vulgarity or pedantry. This is exactly why we have numerous naming conventions for specific problem areas. I think we need to be '''much''' clearer about this aswell. -- [[User:Nbound|Nbound]] ([[User talk:Nbound|talk]]) 22:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
:::Another quibble... both this policy and the NPOV policy actually implies that COMMONNAME ''does'' "trump" non-neutrality concerns. [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 23:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
::::And if the common name is either incorrect or confusing - what then? Also NPOV doesnt imply any such thing, the common name isnt necessarily free from POV problems (it often is, which is why common name can help; but not always). -- [[User:Nbound|Nbound]] ([[User talk:Nbound|talk]]) 00:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
::::::It is not clear to me if you think that articles such as the [[Boston Massacre]] and the [[Patriot (American Revolution)]] should be moved because they are not neutral? The [[English Civil War]] was clearly a civil war in the way few are, so should the [[American Civil War]] be renamed [[War Between the States]] in the interests of NPOV as that is more accurate and less biased name than Civil War.-- [[User:PBS|PBS]] ([[User talk:PBS|talk]]) 10:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::::Is there anyone actually calling either of those wars the things you said, probably not... if all sources are in agreeance to a name there, isnt any NPOV issue. if its a contentious issue, there may be a reason to choose a neutrally worded name. For example, some kind of issue between two religious groups, one side might refer to it by a negative name, one side might by a positive name, it may be best to choose a name from the middleground, as long as it is reasonably obviously referring to the thing in question. And as always, with any WP rule, use common sense! - furthermore there are other reasons (some listed above) why other names may be chosen over the "common name" -- [[User:Nbound|Nbound]] ([[User talk:Nbound|talk]]) 08:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' I am a little surprised at the "neither" comments - given that I didn't phrase the question as either-or. I also didn't propose being prescriptive, merely clarifying the policy wording so that it becomes LESS prescriptive by clearly stating that COMMONNAME does not necessarily privilege overall frequency over frequency of use within the relevant domain of knowledge. [[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 23:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
* I believe that COMMONNAME is:
** One tool among many, and not always the best tool.
** Best interpreted in reference to the frequency in ''high-quality'' and ''English-language'' reliable sources, not all sources or all webpages.
** Not an excuse to choose inaccurate, imprecise, or confusing titles. [[User:WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing]] ([[User talk:WhatamIdoing|talk]]) 02:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''Neither''' it has to be the most common usage in ''reliable sources''. This does not mean that the sources are restricted to specialist publications, only that the source be reliable. [[WP:JARGON]] clearly indicates we should not be restricted to just specialist publications (such as publications not in English, which is being used to move articles around, because it is the "original language" source). -- [[Special:Contributions/76.65.128.222|76.65.128.222]] ([[User talk:76.65.128.222|talk]]) 04:58, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
::That "it has to be" is the sort of problem I was referring to. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon|talk]]) 05:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
:::Exactly. It all depends on the topic, how different usage is between specialized and non-specialized publications, precisely how specialized the publications are, etc. An article about some aspect of nuclear physics which is rarely covered in the popular media is quite different from an article about a well known historical event, for example. There is no substitute for editorial judgement; no "magic formula" which will avoid the need for discussion in problem cases. [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 08:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
::::[[WP:JARGON]] does not cover it as it is a MOS guideline and is neither part of the AT policy of its naming conventions (guidelines). It is covered in the AT policy by "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, '''although not necessarily an expert in''', the subject will recognize" (my emphasis). -- [[User:PBS|PBS]] ([[User talk:PBS|talk]]) 10:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::::What does it mean to be familiar with? To me it means to have read reliable sources about the topic written by experts. Reading a book by an expert doesn't make you a specialist but it makes you familiar with specialist usage.[[User talk:Maunus|User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·]] 03:15, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::Theres going to be examples where lay people with an interest will not recognise article titles, purely because a topic has been drilled down far enough that no lay person could be expected to know about it. Another possibility is that a lay persons concept or idea of something could be at best ambiguous; or at worst completely incorrect. As has been said by many here, these policies, especially common name, arent catchall rules, they are tools. Apply common sense and weigh up article names using any and all criteria available; including, but not limited to common name. -- [[User:Nbound|Nbound]] ([[User talk:Nbound|talk]]) 21:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
*'''This discussion has been cited''' [http://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AAna_Ivanovic&diff=566350545&oldid=566349147 here]. The citation appears to represent contributors here [[User:WhatamIdoing]] [[User:Dicklyon]] 76.65.128.222 [[User:Maunus]] [[User:FormerIP]] [[User:Nbound]] [[User:Blueboar]] [[User:Frungi]] as supporting that the basic-ASCII html version of an East European name is the WP:COMMONNAME for that person. For all I know it's quite possible that some of the editors in the discussion here do believe that the basic-ASCII html version of an East European name is the WP:COMMONNAME for that person, however I see it nowhere in the discussion here, and we just added [[François Mitterrand]] (which is unicode, not basic-ASCII) to WP:COMMONNAME partly to prevent exactly this kind of misunderstanding. [[User:In ictu oculi|In ictu oculi]] ([[User talk:In ictu oculi|talk]]) 05:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
::It is pretty amazing how far PBS can twist a conversation and mention it for what it's not! [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] ([[User talk:Dicklyon|talk]]) 05:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
:::Actually, our Mitterrand example intentionally says ''nothing'' about the ASCII vs Unicode issue... The example given is "François Mitterrand (not: François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand)"... it is an example of where a person's first and last names are commonly used, but the ''full'' name (with middle names included) is not. [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 18:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
::::Blueboar, no it doesn't, but as I said it was added partly to prevent exactly this kind of misunderstanding. [[User:In ictu oculi|In ictu oculi]] ([[User talk:In ictu oculi|talk]]) 23:41, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::I remember the discussion... you may have had that intent in mind, but I am not sure the rest of us had the same intent. (I know I didn't). [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 00:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
::::::No, it was clear you didn't. [[User:In ictu oculi|In ictu oculi]] ([[User talk:In ictu oculi|talk]]) 00:56, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
:::::::Well, if the two people who were primarily involved in ''adding'' the Mitterand example were/are not in agreement as to its intent... is there any wonder that that ''others'' disagree as to its intent? [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 14:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
*'''Keep''' the recommendation that it be based on usage by Reliable Sources (which can include popular sources such as newspapers). To base it on general lay usage (however measured - Google hits, ngrams, polls, etc.) rather than Reliable Sources would degrade the encyclopedia. You would wind up with articles titled "Princess Di" and "A-Rod". You might as well base the encyclopedia on a Family Feud model, where the winning answer was based on "Survey says...." even if it was factually incorrect. --[[User:MelanieN|MelanieN]] ([[User talk:MelanieN|talk]]) 17:17, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
*'''Comment''' Sometimes a common term refers to a specific condition (common cold equals viral rhinopharyngitis) and when it does we should use the common term. Sometimes the common term equals many condition (heart attack could mean either cardiac arrest or myocardial infarction, different condition need different articles). We need to use common sense. [[User:Jmh649|<span style="color:#0000f1">'''Doc James'''</span>]] ([[User talk:Jmh649|talk]] · [[Special:Contributions/Jmh649|contribs]] · [[Special:EmailUser/Jmh649|email]]) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:48, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
::While absolutely agreeing that we need to use common sense (which, as per the cliché, is not always common), we also need to keep remembering that [[WP:COMMONNAME]] is just an expansion of {{em|one}} of the {{em|five}} criteria used in deciding on an article title. "Precision" applies in the frequent cases where a single common term corresponds to more than one article topic. [[User:Peter coxhead|Peter coxhead]] ([[User talk:Peter coxhead|talk]]) 14:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
*'''Oppose change''' The current ambiguous policy is better than any alternative proposed. I agree that the current policy causes problems. [[User:Bluerasberry|<span style="background:#cedff2;color:#11e">''' Blue Rasberry '''</span>]][[User talk:Bluerasberry|<span style="cursor:help"><span style="background:#cedff2;color:#11e">(talk)</span></span>]] 14:51, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
*Sorry for being a bit late to this party! With respect to the exact way in which you phrased your question, I think that in the unlikely event the name used in {{em|reliable}} lay sources is hopelessly in conflict with the name used in reliable expert sources, I do indeed think that the lay sources should triumph. The reason why is pretty well stated in [[WP:SSF|this]] this essay that another editor wrote perhaps a little to stridently on perhaps a slightly different topic. Basically, wikipedia is a general knowledge encyclopedia, not a specialist source for experts, so why should we follow the generalists when there's a conflict. For instance, as the person said above, and assuming these two things are the same, the article should be named orangutan and not pongo even if biologists exclusively use pongo in their literature. Our readers aren't likely to be expert biologists. (I don't know anything about orangutans or pongos (?) so I'm sorry if this is a terrible example.) Nor should we be running around using super-obscure medical and legal names {{em|when more recognizable alternatives will do}}. I am not sure given the way this discussion is phrased that you adequately considered the possibility of {{em|reliable}} non-expert sources. With regard to the latter question, I'm not familiar enough with COMMONNAME disputes to know whether it needs to be clarified. Sorry. '''[[User:Agnosticaphid|<font color="DarkGreen">AgnosticAphid</font>]]''' [[User talk:agnosticaphid|talk]] 06:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
*'''Support''' clarification as suggested by User:Maunus. Wikipedia should reflect the recent expert knowledge, not layman names. I think that follows from what sources are considered reliable. --[[User:Space simian|Space simian]] ([[User talk:Space simian|talk]]) 09:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC). As an example: [[alcohol (disambiguation)|alcohol]] should refer to the article about [[alcohol]]s and not [[ethanol]]; i.e. it should reflect usage by reliable expert (chemist) sources. (And regarding orangutans, I suspect experts refer to them as orangutans for the most part as well.) --[[User:Space simian|Space simian]] ([[User talk:Space simian|talk]]) 07:38, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
== Sponsors and "naming rights" ==
It is common, particularly for sports stadiums and similar buildings, for sponsors to have temporary naming rights to a building. This means the official name for a building may change frequently. Sometimes the common name reflects these changes, and sometimes it doesn't. Generally the Wikipedia convention is to stick to the more generic name for the article, even if the sponsored official name becomes fairly common. However that practice isn't currently reflected in this policy, or as a separate written convention. Should it be?
* [[City of Manchester Stadium]] - formally "(The) Etihad Stadium"
* [[The Oval]] - formally "(The) Kia Oval"
Counterexamples include:
* [[Emirates Stadium]] - generic name is "Ashburton Grove (Stadium)" but it was named the Emirates before building was completed and has never had an alternative official name
::I'm not so sure that it is accurate to say there is "Wikipedia convention" to stick to the old name... It really is more a question of [[WP:COMMONNAME]] (do sources start using the new "sponsor" name, or do they reject it and continue to use the old name).
::I note that all your examples are UK based. It may be that UK sources are more resistant to change than American sources ... We change article titles on US stadiums and ball parks quite frequelntly... examples are: [[Enron Field]] to [[Minute Maid Park]]... [[Pacific Bell Park]] to [[SBC Park]] to [[AT&T Park]]... [[Jacobs Field]] to [[Progressive Field]]... etc. All were justified because the new name quickly became the WP:COMMONNAME used in sources. [[User:Blueboar|Blueboar]] ([[User talk:Blueboar|talk]]) 16:17, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
:::International organisations that take over a city or a country for a jamboree throw up some interesting naming problems. For example they will inst that a venue does not include a commercial name that has not paid them to use the name, so the [[Aviva Stadium]] (which IMHO ought to be called by its old stadium name Landsdown Road) was called the "Dublin Arena" for the [[Aviva Stadium#2011 Europa League Final|2011 UEFA Europa League Final]], and more recently [[The O2 Arena]] was called the "North Greenwich Arena" for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
:::As an example consider when the Welsh Rugby Union renamed Cardiff Arms Park the National Stadium everyone including commentators in reliable sources ignored them and continued to call it the Arms Park. But when the old stadium was knocked down and a new one was built the WRU christened it the [[Millennium Stadium]] and that name stuck. So I think COMMONNAME covers this issue of naming stadiums and there is no need for a specific paragraph, although I think it might be a good idea to add "third party" before "reliable sources" in the phrase "then more weight should be given to the name used in {{green|third party}} reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change" to cover purely commercial changes of name, (this is something which I had already considered proposing over the discussion above about [[#Article titles for transgender people]]. -- [[User:PBS|PBS]] ([[User talk:PBS|talk]]) 17:10, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
*I think this is the province of COMMONNAME, with the Etihad forming part of the borderline (as that name has easily entered into the footballing lexicon, but not fully). '''[[User:Sceptre|Sceptre]]''' <sup>([[User talk:Sceptre|talk]])</sup> 17:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
**A similar problem has come up with shopping centres. Various companies will buy out the complexes and slap a uniform corporate branding upon them. However locals frequently carry on using the existing name, which is often restored after the next buyout, but the web searches can be dominated by chains using the new name in postal addresses on their branch list rather than by the usage in the local press and various local organisations. [[User:Timrollpickering|Timrollpickering]] ([[User talk:Timrollpickering|talk]]) 23:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
Revision as of 06:42, 9 September 2013
This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Article titles. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Diacritics in Latin alphabet European names titles
I've noted over the last 2 years that the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of the little group of editors (some of whom are not notably active article space contributors) at WT:AT is out of line with the consensus of the community on the subject of full spelling of Latin alphabet European names. The local group here includes at least 1 of the most dedicated anti-diacritic campaigners on en.wp and a couple of editors who sympathize with the position, while at the same time 100% of en.wp's straightforward case Latin alphabet European BLPs use full diacritic unicode titles (except for 1 WP:POINTY exception). The dislocate between guideline and reality is both evident, and potentially disruptive, since the guideline re. (i.e. against) use of full spelling of Latin alphabet European names here occasionally generates confusion outside WP:AT itself.
For this reason the guidance here is probably going to have to go to RfC at some point to attempt to bring what WP:AT says into line with reality and near universal article-contributor consensus in the project. One small improvement that can be made now however, would be to correctly link to WP:Reliable sources. The bluelink [Wikipedia:Verifiability|reliable sources] is currently pipelinked away from WP:Reliable sources to WP:Verifiability, which is a different issue. I propose to correct the pipelink to direct to the correct page. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:56, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
This has nothing to do with Unicode or fonts. Those are underware. It's about diacritics. Unicode also includes Cyrillic and Greek and CJK characters among others, but we try to limit ourselves to the Roman alphabet, because those are the characters that English readers have some familiarity with, and can cope with even if they don't know what the diacritics mean. I agree that we should usually use them, except when a name has become very commonly adopted into English without as an exonym. Not all cases will be easy to decide. Dicklyon (talk) 02:14, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Dicklyon, evidently I was using "unicode" as shorthand, I have changed the above to read full spelling of Latin alphabet European names, since that is what is meant. Given that 100% of BLPs (minus 1) are full spelling of Latin alphabet European BLP names, do you believe that those circa 500,000 BLPs appear in high-MOS full diacritic unicode (glossy hardback academic books) more often than they appear in html sources like sports websites? In other words, are en.wp editors following the instruction to count the number of appearances in high-MOS sources vs. number of appearances in low-MOS sources? Take Lech Wałęsa, a typical example, does that title agree with the guideline here to count appearances in high-MOS (10) and low-MOS (12,400) sources? Is the guideline here out of line with article reality or not? In ictu oculi (talk) 02:44, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Diacritics does not mean non-English letters. Diacritic modified English letters are not the same thing as full spelling of Latin alphabet European names, since (1) the true Latin alphabet is smaller than the English alphabet by a few letters, (2) European Latin-derived alphabets contain several characters from non-Latin alphabets, or which do not exist in English alphabets at all. ETH, THORN and ESZETT come to mind as the most prominent examples of non-English letters that are not diacritic modified letters. They clearly are not mostly recognizable by most English language users from outside of Europe itself. The ESZETT looks like a B or Beta and clearly engenders confusion, and the lowercase ETH isn't what most people would think it is (a lower case "O" with an accent) so clearly engendering confusion. THORN looks like someone did a p/d/q incorrectly, which can't happen on a computer, so is uninterpretable. -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 02:58, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi 76.65.128.222, yes, I think everyone knows this, I think everyone also knows that there are cases such as eszett which are not straightforward cases. What I said above is that "100% of en.wp's straightforward case Latin alphabet European BLPs use unicode titles." Is what I said correct or not? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:10, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
I've taken the liberty of (re-)renaming this section to something that's hopefully unambiguous and precise. This isn't about the use of the full set of characters available under Unicode, or the use of any particular alphabet; this is about whether we can/should use diacritics in titles.
And while we're at it: IIO, if I'm not mistaken, 100% of Wikipedia's everything uses Unicode characters, because the site itself uses UTF-8. If you tried to use anything else, it would not display correctly. —Frungi (talk) 06:53, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Hello Frungi
You are correct in your question, I can confirm that 100% of wikipedia uses unicode characters, because the site itself uses UTF-8, however not all sports websites cited as sources make full use of the possibilities of unicode.
That correction seems entirely uncontroversial, but I don't see such a link in this policy. Are you sure you've got the right page? Or maybe I'm just missing it. —Frungi (talk) 07:12, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
Frungi, yes, you are right, my mistake, on this page WP:UE "reliable sources" is not linked/pipelinked at all, it is 'dead' black text. I was confusing WP:UE with WP:EN, where it is so pipelinked, and based on your comment above I have made this edit there and noted on Talk there. Thanks. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:21, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
The linkage should be to WP:SOURCES that is the policy on reliable sources. It should not be linking to guidelines. This page used to point to WP:SOURCES I am not sure when that was changed but I propose that it is changed back. -- PBS (talk) 13:43, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
User:Frungi, I made the edit there as per your "entirely controversial" comment and was reverted by PBS. As I said I believe there's a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS of a small group of editors at WP:UE and WP:EN/WP:DIACRITICS who are at odds with the project as a whole on this issue and that an RfC will probably be necessary to remove the disruption caused by having a guideline WP:POINTedly at odds with article title reality. But in the meantime, how many editors here in addition to PBS object to bluelink reliable sources actually linking to WP:Reliable sources both in WP:UE (here) and WP:EN (there)? In ictu oculi (talk) 06:44, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
As WP:SOURCES points to WP:RS "for further information," I would not object to the text "reliable sources" linking to either one. But I wonder why such a trivial matter as which project page is linked seems to be such a large focus of what seems like it should be a discussion about how articles should be titled. Shouldn't these be two separate discussions to avoid confusion and distraction? —Frungi (talk) 06:59, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Hi Frungi, in an ideal world yes. However given the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problem at this Talk page I think it's best to be upfront about a principal reason for wanting "reliable sources" bluelink to actually lead to WP:Reliable sources. But this should be a separate discussion and is. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:26, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Frungi, for a long time WP:V carried a statement that when WP:V and WP:RS appeared to contradict each other WP:V took precedence. This (AT) is a policy page: it is better that it links to WP:SOURCES as section in the policy WP:V, than to a guideline WP:RS so that there is no confusion over what reliable sources means. -- PBS (talk) 22:55, 11 August 2013 (UTC)
Frungi, I won't waste too much time on this as this is just 2 pages (WP:UE and WP:EN) and two statements which are largely ignored by the editing community since they conflict with article title reality and the overwhelming community consensus. Pace PBS' comments there is now confusion about what reliable sources means, which is why WP:UE and WP:EN mention of "reliable sources" actually linking to WP:Reliable sources would be helpful. Allowing readers to click through from bluelink mention "reliable sources" to see what WP:Reliable sources actually says would confirm that article title reality is in line with WP:Reliable sources definition of WP:Reliable sources as WP:RS "sources reliable for the statement being made", and head off the disruptive interpretation that (e.g.) sources which do not carry French accents are reliable sources for the spelling of French names.
It's unfortunate that a number of editors at WP:UE and WP:EN should have taken up such an antagonistic position against article title reality, whether that is in denial of that reality, or in deliberately wording guidelines to conflict with that reality. But it seems no one is greatly concerned - article contributors ignore the guideline, and the writers of the guideline ignore article contributors. So the situation can be left. This may not be the only example of a MOS guideline which is wildly out of touch with article reality. In ictu oculi (talk) 06:15, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
User:BD2412 I don't think this discussion will help in relation to Zurich since Zurich claims English exonym status, which villages and tennis players don't. I only commented in that RM, my feeling is that Zürich is moving from exonym to endonym (per Lonely Planet Eastern Europe 2012 "Air Berlin (AB; www.airberlin.com) Flies to Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Munich, Zürich and Geneva." which is the pattern seen in other English exonyms where the exonym is only distinguished by lack of an accent or umlaut. This phenomenon is covered in relevant literature such as UN conf on geo names. It seems pretty much inevitable that all exonyms which are distinguished only by lack of a simple French/German/Spanish accent/umlaut will eventually transit to being treated as typographic limits rather than genuine exonyms. This has already happened for modern Cádiz, happened for modern Aragón (and en.wp is lagging behind the change and fighting the sources), but in the Zurich case the en.wp move is perhaps ahead of the print sources change - but nevertheless going in the same direction. In ictu oculi (talk) 04:52, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Stylized non-trademark titles
I’m copying this from WT:MOS since this page seems more active: Do we have a guideline or consensus about non-trademark names, like song and album titles, that use strange stylization? I can’t find anything, but my impulse would be to apply MOS:TM to any oddly styled titles and use the most standard-looking format in common usage. —Frungi (talk) 18:04, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
I would tend to stick a bit more closely to the original artist-made titles of creative works than to merely commercial products. bd2412T18:34, 20 August 2013 (UTC)
First, let's be clearer about what exactly we are talking about? On one hand you have stylized typography. For example, the Beatles used a stylized typography on most of their early albums and on Ringo's drum kit. An example of a stylized typography which we don't repeat when presenting a name in Wikipeida. On the other hand we have stylized spelling. For example, the way deadmau5 is stylized with the number 5 instead of an "s".
To me the key to figuring out whether to present a name with stylization in Wikipedia is to determine the stylization is used by reliable sources when talking about the topic. When talking about the Beatles, very few (if any) sources use that band's stylized typography ... so neither does Wikipedia. On the other hand, when talking about Deadmau5, lot's of sources use the artist's stylized spelling ... so Wikipedia does as well. This is essentially a function of WP:COMMONNAME. Blueboar (talk) 12:55, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
"Deadmau5" is an exception to the rule - from recent discussions, it seems 100% of sources use this, so we would be at odds with the rest of the world if we didn't. Otherwise, I'd say apply WP:NCCAPS or MOS:TM - the same principle would apply to non-TMs with similar stylings. See Se7en and all the other examples at MOS:TM. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:01, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
No, Deadmau5 isn't an exception to the rule... it's a perfect example of the rule in action. I think you may misunderstand what the COMMONNAME "rule" actually says. In most (if not all) of the examples at MOS:TM, WP:COMMONNAME does not apply ... because the sources are mixed in how they present the name (for example, about half of the sources use "Se7en" and half use "Seven"). In other words, they are cases where we don't actually have a COMMONly used name to follow. Blueboar (talk) 13:27, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
We had a dispute a while ago about the film, Dot the i. The title is self-evidently intended to have a lowercase "i" (since you can't dot an I, unless you are speaking of the Turkish İ, which this film is not). Nevertheless, many sources capitalized the "I" in reviews and commentaries; others did not. The result of the two move discussions involving this title was to keep the "i" lowercase. This is, to me, a perfect example of artist's intent trumping other style considerations. bd2412T13:57, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Actually, you'll find that is far from being a perfect example - it's a terrible example, as the requested move was closed as no consensus, despite theirthere being a consensus to move. The move review was poorly handled also. There is however definitely no consensus to WP:IAR in that case. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
There were nine !votes in support of moving (including the nominator), and nine !votes opposed to moving. There is no scenario under which that constitutes "their [sic] being a consensus to move". Virtually all of the support for moving was by reference to Wikipedia policy, not the actual merits of one title or another. This discussion is about what the policy should, in fact, be. The fact that half of the people in that discussion preferred substance over a mere recitation of policy indicates that the policy needs to be adjusted to match circumstances in the real world. bd2412T14:19, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Apologies, my memory failed me - it was closed as not moved, despite there being strong policy and guideline based arguments for the move, and weak arguments along the lines of "it's what the poster says" against. At worst it should have been a no consensus. The move review was badly handled also. So, yeah, not a good example. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:25, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
I think it is an excellent example of the need to expand upon article naming policy to state that where the artist has chosen a certain title styling for a creative work, and at least some reliable sources use this styling, then that styling should be permitted as an article title. bd2412T14:40, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Good luck with that - I think it illustrates perfectly why we shouldn't permit it. I think the last paragraph of the lead at WP:NCCAPS explains it well, and may help Frungi, as it shows the ethos behind why we don't use "official" styling. --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:54, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
"Dot the i" is also a terrible example of anything because the movie poster clearly shows a capital I being dotted by a blob of blood (and a lowercase "dot": "dot the I"). Why some people insist on seeing and wanting to ape a lowercase i there baffles me. Dicklyon (talk) 15:11, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
If that policy clearly reflected the consensus of the community, then we wouldn't be having this discussion. bd2412T16:12, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
I get the idea that people are trying to figure out what the "official" Stylization for a movie/song/album/artist/etc is. That's wrong... Remember that we do not necessarily use "official" names... nor should we necessarily use the "official" styling. That said, I strongly feel that we should be "sourcing" style presentation. It's time to create a COMMONSTYLE policy that echoes COMMONNAME. We can not judge COMMONSTYLE usage on one movie poster or youtube trailer... we need to examine style usage in multiple reliable sources. For example... To settle whether to present the movie's name as "Dot the I" or "Dot the i", we would need to see how the name is presented in a wide range of reliable sources... especially those that talk about the movie... industry magazines, news paper reviews, etc. (and since I have not done such an analysis, I have no opinion on which it should be). The same is true with all other "styling" disputes. If a significant majority of appropriate (reliable) sources present the topic/subject using a given stylization, then (assuming it is physically possible given the limitations of our software) Wikipedia should follow the sources and do so as well. If, on the other hand, source presentation is more mixed... then we can say that there is no COMMONSTYLE, and we are free to discuss what presentations we (the article editors) think would be best and reach a consensus. Blueboar (talk) 17:09, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
That is exactly what happened in the Dot the i discussion (at least with regards to my participation in it). I provided reliable sources of exactly the kind you mention (industry magazines and newspaper movie reviews) showing use of the lowercase i. Of course, there are sources using it both ways, just as there were reviewers of U-Turn (1973 film) and of U Turn (1997 film) which left out the hyphen when it belonged in the title, or added the hyphen where it didn't belong, and just as a number of reviewers carelessly wrote about "Inglorious Bastards". If you were to put the Dot the i reviews on a scale, probably more sources weighed in favor of the uppercase I, but if the author's intent was to name the film with a lowercase "i", then this is no different from carelessly "correcting" the spelling of "Basterds". bd2412T17:28, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Personally, I’d prefer that guideline to say (I know it’s awfully worded, but still) to use standard-looking style if it could reasonably be said that such a style is in somewhat common use (as is the case with “Seven”, and not the case with “Deadmaus”). It shouldn’t be a matter of which style “wins”, but whether our preferred (lack of) style is actually used. But that’s a discussion for MOS:TM, and my question was about non-trademarked names that it does not apply to—or should it be applied to all stylized names regardless of legal status? —Frungi (talk) 18:29, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
That's why I like the idea of a COMMONSTYLE guideline... the legal status of the name does not matter... usage in sources is what matters. If a significant majority of sources present the name with a given stylization when talking about the subject, we would present the name with that stylization too. If the sources don't stylize, then neither would we. And if the sources are mixed, we discuss, argue and reach a consensus as to what we think is best in that specific instance. Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
We are really not talking about legal status here (except, perhaps, under some European Moral rights type of regime); in the United States, at least, the titles of individual works of art are not protected other than by trademark attaching to their commercial use. Nevertheless, if a majority of sources errantly identified Tarantino's World War II opus as "Inglourious Bastards", or wrote about K.D. Lang, we would be wrong to follow their mistake. bd2412T19:10, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, editors still have to use their best judgment and distinguish between mistakes and deliberate choices. —Frungi (talk) 19:27, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
So do we have any such guideline, or anything that would contradict it, or anything? Or is MOS:TM currently the only place we directly address the matter (aside from capitalization)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frungi (talk • contribs)
I would say that MOS:TM doesn't really "address the matter" at all, since it applies to trademarks, and titles are not trademarks. It's the wild west out here. bd2412T20:18, 21 August 2013 (UTC)
This was prompted by a discussion (between two people) about Japanese song and album titles (which aren’t trademarked), since Japanese artists and labels have a habit of inserting characters like 〜 (wave dash) and ☆ (star) into some of their titles. Sometimes they’re purely decorative, and sometimes they serve the purpose of dashes or parentheses. —Frungi (talk) 01:32, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Moral rights
This discussion got me thinking about whether Wikipedia does, in fact, recognize the moral rights of artists. The principle is mentioned here, with respect to paraphrasing. It seems to me that, just as Wikipedia recognizes copyrights (and therefore will not allow copying of a copyright-protected work) and dignitary rights (and therefore would not allow libel or slander to occur either in the body of an article, or in an article title), we should recognize some measure of moral rights. Under Article IV of the Berne Convention, the author of the work has the right to have the title of the work appear on any copies of the work distributed. Presumably, this would be the title as chosen by the author, including any unconventional capitalization. I think it is a reasonable precaution to apply that to articles discussing such works, to the extent that this does not broach technical limitations or conflict with other legal regimes. bd2412T17:45, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, no. It's not a legal concept here in the US. and there is nothing in the style guides suggesting it as a consideration. Whether it should be, is another matter. — Arthur Rubin(talk)02:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Looking at it just from a reader point of view, unconventional capitalization (or punctuation, etc.) in titles could very likely hinder readability in prose. As a display title, it’s fine, but we don’t really use display titles. —Frungi (talk) 02:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
I can imagine some artists intentionally naming a work using a mix of camel case, letters, numbers, punctuation, and so on, just to make an artistic statement. I suppose a good example would be Prince's adoption of a symbol as his name, which lead to the papers calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince". If we were to recognize moral rights, I think they would still be trumped by at least technical limitations and readability concerns. Beyond that, as an intellectual property attorney, I would say that it would be difficult, but not impossible, for an artist in a moral rights country to get a court to issue an order demanding that we title our article on his work just as the artist titled the work. bd2412T03:46, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Temporarily closing this section, pending a resolution of the Manning rename. That rename discussion has had a lot more input that this page, so the whatever comes out of that should inform what we do here. As such, I propose we keep this closed until a week or so after the move request is closed, to let things settle down, then re-open or start a new section with any new proposed policy changes. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:57, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
This policy (Wikipedia:Article titles) does not appear to deal gracefully with titles of articles on transgender individuals. In particular, the section on "Use commonly recognizable names" (WP:COMMONNAME) does not address a situation when someone declares a certain gender identity and coverage by organizations/media** shifts from using the old name to the new name.
**Shorthand for "major international organizations, major English-language media outlets, quality encyclopedias, geographic name servers, major scientific bodies, and notable scientific journals"
The case of Chelsea (formerly known as Bradley) Manning presents a great example. There is considerable debate on that article's talk page with regards to what the article should be titled. The debate is weighty and multifaceted, but the discussion here (on this talk page) should be limited to article titles and not to pronoun usage or any topic other than titles.
I see there being three major options to address the uncertainty many editors (including myself) feel with regards to this policy.
Option 1
Recent coverage by organizations/media should be weighed more heavily than older coverage when considering titles of articles about transgender individuals. Coverage produced after someone declares a given gender identity should be given more weight than coverage produced before the declaration. Reports using the person's previous name should be considered less weighty than more recent reports.
This proposal rejects, at least in the case of transgender individuals, the notion that the article title should not be changed until / if the sum of historic coverage of the new name outweighs the sum of historic coverage of the old name.
Whether this change should apply to all articles or just to articles about transgender individuals is another, related question.
Option 2
The titles of articles on transgender individuals should be exempted from the organizations/media coverage consideration. Instead of following the reports of organizations/media, Wikipedia should title articles according to the person's latest preferred name. The intent of this option is to respect the wishes of the transgender individual, and refer to him or her using the title he or she prefers. This proposal echoes MOS:IDENTITY, which currently does not address article titles but does address vocabulary.
Option 3
Keep the policy as it is. Do not change it.
In summary, I propose discussion about these three options:
Recent coverage should be given more weight than older coverage in the case of titles of articles on transgender individuals. (Whether recent coverage should be given more weight for all articles on Wikipedia is another, broader topic).
The titles of articles on transgender individuals should be exempt from considerations about coverage by organizations/media, and should instead follow the person's latest preferred name.
This policy (Wikipedia:Article titles) should remain as it is. No change is necessary for transgender individuals.
I think that it is abundantly clear that sometimes names change, and that these name changes can come about irrespective of a change in legal status. I would agree that "Recent coverage by organizations/media should be weighed more heavily than older coverage", but I would say that such a principle should apply universally, and not just with respect to gender changes. Chastity Bono became Chaz Bono, but by the same stroke, Ron Artest became Metta World Peace, Stacy Ferguson became Fergie, and Chad Johnson became Chad Ocho Cinco, then Chad Ochocinco, and is now back to Chad Johnson (although he has not legally changed it back, due to cost considerations). In each case, the new became the predominant usage in the media, and the article title eventually followed, changing to the new name. bd2412T18:50, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
In any case, I do think it would be nice to clarify the policy on name changes. How do we handle situations in which some entity changes its name? That's an open question, and one of the core discussions we'll need to have. CaseyPenk (talk) 18:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
I've been following the discussion on too many Noticeboards and Talk Pages and this is the first one I've encountered that actually thoughtfully talks about Manning in the light of how this should be addressed by Wikipedia Naming and BLP policies and whether those policies need to be amended to deal with notable people's name changes.
Personally, I think we should call people the name they identify with. This can change based on marriage (or divorce), pseudonyms, nicknames, showbiz names, etc. Think of it this way, if there was an actress everyone knew as "Margaret Sullivan Smith" and she got a divorce and wanted to be known as "Margaret Sullivan", wouldn't Wikipedia change her article title, even if people still referred to her as "Margaret Sullivan Smith"?
I was going through old bios of actors who worked circa 1900-1950 and I'd guess only 25% of them used their birth name. But, of course, Wikipedia refers to them how they chose to be identified in their careers, not by their given names.
This is itself a weighty and multifaceted question that I can't say I have thought about enough to have a fully informed opinion about. But I did want to point out that, given that the MOS does require the body of articles to use (sorry!) pronouns reflecting their self-declared gender, it may be worth considering whether or not it's awkward to use a birth name with a unexpected pronoun. Personally, it seems awkward to have sentences like "John was arrested when she went to the grocery store", but on the other hand, with certain article subjects the birth name may be so familiar that using the new name so that it matches the pronoun could be equally or more unexpected. AgnosticAphidtalk20:56, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, that's certainly an excellent point. Perhaps my feeling of awkwardness with name/pronoun disagreement just reflects my lack of exposure to this issue. AgnosticAphidtalk22:51, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
With respect to the issue B2C raises, had Manning announced a desire to be treated as a women without simultaneously announcing a name change, we would still change the pronouns in the article to reflect this new gender identity. bd2412T23:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
The reason I am uncomfortable with just adopting reliable sources' names wholesale based on a head count is that it is unclear to me how we would determine whether reliable source X's decision to continue using birth name was a deliberate choice or not. I totally agree that it makes sense to distinguish name and title from pronoun use now that you've shown me that male names can coexist with female pronouns in WP articles, but just using this example that I am familiar with (sorry again! especially since you need to have no opinion about it!) it's not clear to me that news sources that continue to use "Bradley Manning" necessarily made a deliberate decision to do so. Furthermore, Manning's not really a good example, so leaving that article to one side, with regard to transgender people that are notable but not especially famous, it's entirely possible that a reliable source would ignorantly utilize a birth name without knowing that the person recently announced a they preferred a differently gendered name. AgnosticAphidtalk00:21, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
My thought on the matter of naming is that we use the common name, except when that name is wrong. Mark Twain is a perfectly acceptable common name for Samuel Clemens, since it was his pseudonym. The Statue of Liberty is a perfectly acceptable common name for Liberty Enlightening the World, since it is a descriptive name given by the people. Sears Tower, however, is not acceptable, because it is incorrect. It's not a current valid name, nor was it an organic name given by the people. It was the name of a building, and now it is not. We should give more credence to accuracy than commonality. So, in the case of Manning, the decision seems clear: The article should be at Chelsea Manning. To do otherwise would either be inaccurate, or be an admission that names cannot be chosen by the parties involved, they can only be determined by a government or culture. --Golbez (talk) 21:05, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Support Option 1 - We should follow usage in reliable sources, as always, and, when there has been a recent change, give more weight to usage in recent publications. Absolutely reject Option 2 - WP needs to follow the lead set by reliable sources. We do not make the decision to use the new name someone has announced they prefer to be called, unless and until other reliable sources do so. We have no obligation or responsibility to be more sensitive sooner to such matters than the New York Times. --B2C21:56, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Support Option 3 - It pretty much is the normal for newer sources to have more weight than older ones when it comes to an article title, making into policy I don't think is really needed. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 22:34, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Well, of course, many of the Support votes are doing so. But many of the opposes are arguing we should follow the person's request immediately, and not wait for reliable sources. I favor Option 1 because I think we should be clear that even in such cases we follow sources, albeit the recent ones. --B2C23:28, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Support option 2 as this option is in accordance with our existing policy on the matter per MOS:IDENTITY and WP:BLP. Someone's name, and hence the title of a biographical article, is really a BLP issue, and the only requirement for using someone's correct name will be that we have reliable sources, not volume. You simply don't refer to someone using a name which they have explicitly asked not to be used, that's just not acceptable. In any case, media coverage prior to the name change is obviously irrelevant in regard to the title. Obviously, a new situation in that regard emerges when someone adopts a new name. The old name then simply becomes inaccurate/its use outdated. Josh Gorand (talk) 23:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC) (some minor changes added later) Josh Gorand (talk) 23:42, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Per your statement "In any case, media coverage prior to the name change is obviously irrelevant in regard to the title," would you support option 1 as a fallback or alternative? CaseyPenk (talk) 23:37, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I obviously agree with the principle that media coverage after the fact carries more weight. Although I still think this is a BLP issue and an issue of factual accuracy, not media coverage. Josh Gorand (talk) 23:42, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)×2 Where any living person unambiguously expresses a wish to be known by a certain name, and this expressed desire is verifiable in reliable sources (including in a reliable primary source) then our article title should match that desire, subject only to disambiguation and transliteration issues. Anything else is incompatible with WP:BLP. Where an expressed wish does not meet either criterion, we should wait until it is both verified and sufficiently unambiguous for our purposes. If relevant, we can report on what other sources, which do not necessarily have an equivalent to our BLP policies, choose to do. I don't know if this translates well to articles that are not about living people, so I offer no opinion about them at the moment. Thryduulf (talk) 23:43, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
Support option 3 - there is no need to change a system that clearly works for transgender people (and presumably including Manning, once the article is unprotected and people have a chance to fix it). It should also be noted that COMMONNAME is not, and never has been the overriding tool in title choice. It is one tool amongst many. This is exactly why we have naming conventions (formally or informally) for many sections of wikipedia, where using the "common name" is likely to create issues -- Nbound (talk) 23:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
What percentage of our titles do you think are compatible with WP:COMMONNAME without regard to any other criteria? 98.7%? 98.8%? or 98.9% or more? --B2C00:06, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Who knows? Even the numbers you have suggested (which could be and probably are quite wrong [it could be higher or lower] for all we know) would still leave tens of thousands of articles that dont follow it alone. I would of course contend that almost all articles are compatible with COMMONNAME, because it is one tool amongst many, and not the be all and end all or article naming. -- Nbound (talk) 00:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
What I mean by "compatible with COMMONNAME" is the title is the name used most commonly in reliable sources to refer to the topic of the article (or that name disambiguated). You don't have to look at all titles to determine the percentage. Just keep clicking on SPECIAL:RANDOM, ignoring titles of unnamed topics with descriptive titles, taking note of how many do and don't meet this criterion, until you have a statistically significant sample size. Yes, there is a tiny percentage of articles, which amounts to a few hundred or maybe a few thousand, which are exceptions to this, but they are extremely rare indeed (go ahead, try to find one), and all have very good reasons to use some other name. I see no reason for this article's topic to be one of those rare exceptions. --B2C00:49, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
As a roads editor, I know that both the US and Australian Roads projects have article naming conventions (WP:USSH and WP:AURDNAME), WP:USSH even being part of the result of an ArbCom decision, which suggest usage other than the common name (or a "specific" common name instead). The main issues for roads were ambiguity and plain incorrectness. These are not the only naming convetions by a long shot, and there are others which arent formalised (The main points of AURDNAME were only formalised very recently for example) -- Nbound (talk) 04:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I will also point out that without an intimate knowledge on many topics, you may not know what is the official name, common name, legal name, and so on of these said topics either. Just because going through a tiny percentage of wikipedia articles (well, minuscule fractions of a percent), we cant find any that are obvious to a layperson, doesnt mean they dont exist, or arent even common. Games consoles like the original Nintendo Entertainment System, had different names depending on where you live. similarly sources will depend on where published. For these articles again, there are other considerations than basic common usage.-- Nbound (talk) 04:21, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Its just occurred to me that all 3 options are very similar depending on interpretation of whats written. I infact agree with 2 and 1 aswell. If we need something at AT for transgendered people than so be it. Im not the only one who has had issues with interpreting this. This needs to be clarified, and a new discussion started. -- Nbound (talk) 05:48, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Insisting upon usage of a former name because the media clings to it is possibly a very offensive and hostile act. When a user at Wikipedia has their account renamed do we still go around openly referring to them by their former user name? No. Some people will know it. Others might learn it. But it is considered disrespectful to flaunt it. Why would we even entertain the idea of treating the subjects of articles worse than we expect of each other? Would that surely not violate the very spirit of the policy on the biographies of living people? When it is a member of a royal family their article changes the day their 'top title' changes and no consideration is given for how little coverage there is in the media about them by that title. American media still frequently refer to her as Kate Middleton but there doesn't seem to be a fight to move the article on her away from Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. Insisting upon a certain amount of media coverage before an article on a transgender person is renamed while doing so instantly for royalty is basic discrimination. This is what redirects are for. Only at Wikipedia and only when the change of name involves a transgender person who has their own article is such fundamentally basic information as a person's name challenged with the aim to reject it as unencyclopædic. Creating an explicit policy/guideline/whatever that justifies discrimination is a dumb thing to do. Casey, you asked on the article talk page why use of a transgender person's birth name is "among the worst things to call a transgender person". Think for a moment simply of the person. Attach to that a great social stigma regarding the reason for the name change. Try to imagine how a name can be used as a very personal pejorative. It seems innocent but if you actually look at it what use of a birth name is doing is refusing to acknowledge the person they are actually speaking/writing about/to. It is conveying "you were and are and always will be <birth name> regardless of everything else" and i/we don't accept/acknowledge this. There isn't the same social stigma attached to marriage but a woman might have similar feeling if you habitually refuse to acknowledge her marriage by insisting upon using her maiden name. The "my name is now Chelsea" letter is published on NBC's website, both in text and a photograph of the original. Do we really think we need or are owed a personal invitation to use her name in referring to her? I guess i fall somewhat near Option 2 except that i don't think accepting or rejecting any person's name based on what the editor of The New York Times likes is an acceptable thing in any way; it is just deferring blame to someone who didn't actually edit the article at Wikipedia. Media are very often against changes of name for private and public matters because it disassociates people with their past and requires re-connecting-the-dots to establish why this name is worthy of mass news coverage. Expect there to be for months or years to come sources which use the name Bradley because that is the famous name. This is what redirects are for. delirious & lost ☯ ~hugs~00:48, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
You have many good points, but you should be persuading the editors of the reliable sources whose (recent) adopted usage we follow, not the editors of WP. --B2C03:47, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
This goes beyond that, its a BLP issue as well. Imagine for a moment there was an article about you, most people get offended/annoyed when there are small innaccuracies (COI problems on these articles arent exactly rare). Now imagine if the article refered to you by the opposite gender than the one you identified with, most people would be annoyed or even angry with this. Wikipedia isnt a news agency, we dont need to keep around old usages to sell more copies. We can be very very accurate though, that is generally the point of Wikipedia, and indeed any encyclopedia. Right in the WP:BLP lead it states "We must get the article right." -- Nbound (talk) 04:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Support Options 1 and 3 (I see them as being the same)... It is important to realize that name changes are not unique to the transgender community... lots of people change their names... hell even entire countries can change their names... and we deal with all name changes the same way: With patience. In any name change situation, there will be a period of time when the subject is still more recognizable under his/her/its old name. Once a reasonable number of reliable sources start using the new name, and that new name becomes more recognizable, then we would change the title. How long this takes depends on the individual subject/topic and source usage... It took years before we had enough sources to justify moving Bombay to Mumbai... with other name changes it took only a week or so. Blueboar (talk) 01:14, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 3 This is obviously related to the Bradley Manning / Chelsea Manning debacle and so I think it needs to be considered after that requested move as the outcome of that will inform this discussion as to what community consensus actually is. I think a significant thing to remember is that article titles are the names we call articles by. The names of the subject of those articles (including the names we call the subject of those articles by) may be very different. The two are not the same thing. From that perspective, I don't see why articles on transgender people should be treated any differently. An article is an article is an article. The name we give to the article is not necessarily the name we call the subject of that article by. --RA (✍) 01:35, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Support Option 2, also support Golbez's expansion: while transgender issues are currently a flashpoint for how COMMONNAME works, I've long been opposed to how COMMONNAME is used as a stick to beat others with. See, for example, Paul McCartney's Russian album, in which COMMONNAME ended up overruling common sense: while many sources used the formulation "Choba B CCCP", it was clear from other reliable sources given (and the album cover itself) that it was supposed to be "Снова в СССР" (tr: "Snova v SSSR"), which is Russian for "Back in the USSR".
With regards to transgender issues, as with all BLPs and to quote the policy, "we must get the article right". When a transgender person transitions, as I am doing, when we change our name it's an intention to leave the old name, which often does not match our gender, behind. To see it being used in a deliberate fashion, often against our express wishes, is incredibly insulting. I can't see how that would comport to BLP's requirement of ethical treatment at all.
The GLAAD media guidelines for transgender issues clearly state that we should use someone's chosen name in all cases. NHS guidance on trans care also state that "names and titles must be changed to reflect current gender status". I'd like to know why Wikipedia should travel a different route. Definitely, we should not rely on reliable sources to change themselves if we have a RS for trans status; as Lord Justice Levesonremarked:
It is clear that there is a marked tendency in a section of the press to fail to treat members of the transgender and intersex communities with sufficient dignity and respect; and in instances where individuals are identified either expressly or by necessary implication perpetrate breaches of clause 12 of the [Press Complaints Commission Editor's Code of Practice]. Parts of the tabloid press continue to seek to ‘out’ transgender people notwithstanding its prohibition in the Editors’ Code. And parts of the tabloid press continue to refer to the transgender community in derogatory terms, holding transgender people up for ridicule, or denying the legitimacy of their condition.
In some ways, the attitude that keeps appearing with regard to trans people vs. COMMONNAME very often does the same thing Leveson criticised the press for. Sceptre(talk)01:55, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Articles are given names that are convenient for readers to find. More often than not, that's the same name as the subject of an article. But it might not be. I think the primary mistake here (and on the Manning page) is conflating the title we give to an article with the name we call a subject by. We can start calling Manning, Chelsea right now, for example, but the page should only move when readers expect to find the article under the title "Chelsea Manning". We're not the NHS. We're not here to help Chelsea Manning transition from being a man to a woman. We can extend courtesy and respect to her choice, but the titles we give to our articles are named with respect and courtesy for our readers, not Manning. --RA (✍) 02:31, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 4 (an alternative proposal) - the 3 options as initially proposed do not properly frame the issues. Depending on how one reads Option 1 (and a little clarification from its proposer may be in order on this point), Option 1 and Option 3 are the same. Option 1 says that "recent coverage should be given more weight than older coverage in the case of titles of articles on transgender individuals. (Whether recent coverage should be given more weight for all articles on Wikipedia is another, broader topic)." Well, Wikipedia's policy on titles already requires that "if the name of a person, group, object, or other article topic changes, then more weight should be given to the name used in reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change," which is essentially the same as what Option 1 proposes, so Option 1 does not change existing policy. The problem with Option 2 is that it errs in the how it assigns relative degrees of reliability to sources. Option 2 treats media organizations, for example, as more reliable on the subject of an individual's name than the individual him- or herself. That is an understandable result of how Wikipedia's policy on reliable sources might be interpreted, since that policy emphasizes the importance of "third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." However, to claim that a third party knows a competent adult's name better than the person him- or herself does is nonsensical. We need an Option 4, which would add a statement to the WP:TITLE policy explicitly clarifying that in cases of individuals announcing a name change related to a self-affirmed gender identity transition, the individual him- or herself is the most reliable source and the final arbiter on the subject of the person's name and gender identity. Article titles should consequently be based on the name the individual has announced for him- or herself. (The person's earlier name/s and gender transition would be discussed in the body of the article.) The existing redirect system would make it easy for readers to still be able to find articles even if they search for the past names of individuals who have changed their names as part of their gender transition. Dezastru (talk) 04:06, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 3 for now. In the middle of crisis is not a good time to work on a careful adjustment to policy. And we should be careful. Let's revisit this after the Manning thing settles out one way or another. Dicklyon (talk) 04:13, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 2. This seems the most logical choice. If someone no longer self-identifies as male, female, or robot, they shouldn't be referred to in that manner any more. The same is true of anyone who changes their name. We shouldn't have to wait for The New York Times to update their style guide before we can update ours. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 05:23, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
option 3 + a section for TRANS people, describing that while we use pronouns that they have self-identified with, the title of the article is still based on WP:AT. Otherwise, I don't see a need to have a special accommodation for people who change gender w.r.t article titles - remember, the title of an article is NOT the person's name, it is the title of an article. The person's legal or preferred name can be (and often is) different than the title, which is chosen for the sake of the readers, not the subject. As such, the current language, which states that we prefer sources AFTER the name change is announced, should be sufficient. Also per Dicklyon, it may be worth shutting this discussion down for a week's time, awaiting the results of the Manning mess, then coming back here to finalize this discussion.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 11:13, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 3 It seems wholly confusing to modify the policy midstream (as we all know which article this is about). And, more importantly, I remain unconvinced that there's something with transgender people that warrants a special case. Wikipedia is not here to promote or advocate for any cause. As everywhere else on Wikipedia, we are a reflection of society; we base our information on reliable sources, not on the desires and preferences of editors. It is not our fault if society, represented by reliable sources, does not heed a subject's name change, transgender or otherwise, and it is not our role to pioneer a trend. -- tariqabjotu14:46, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 2 We are not talking about SEO optimization , we are talking about people. This is needed specially for cases when the person is still alive. This is consistent with MOS:IDENTITY and WP:BLP. "Confusion" is really an unimportant issue that is easily solvable, just use a redirect from old article name. Also note that these are cases in which media treatment is severely afflicted with systemic bias, so this exception is needed to avoid it. Vexorian (talk) 16:59, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Option 3 (no change) is best in the present editorial climate. Note that Option 1 is almost the same, and would be a better solution in practice provided we added some small guidance to the effect that public name changes by an individual do not cause an article to begin violating BLP or other core policies, and do not require blazing-speed out-of-process moves for the sake of avoiding such violations. So long as we recognize the legitimacy of debate over what name is actually used in recent sources, there is no practical issue. The ugly nonsense seen recently was caused by certain editors believing that exigent circumstances, such as the fleeting opportunity to demonize persons not the subject of an article, override not only consensus but every other consideration. 168.12.253.66 (talk) 17:11, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm sure you're aware that this would be a major and dramatic change, and would require moving dozens or even more articles possibly - all in contravention of COMMONNAME and recognizeability. Cat Stevens, Snoop Doog, etc...--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:16, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Cat Stevens is a very good example. In that case, the subject changed his name for an equally sensitive and passion-raising reason: religion. We respect their choice of name in the text but the article title is at the name readers are most familiar with regardless of the subject's preference for their own name. --RA (✍) 20:24, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Have relevant wikiprojects been contacted? (ie. LGBT/transgender related) - Failing to do so will cause all kinds of trouble if any changes get passed without input from interested groups. ArbCom - here we go!? -- Nbound (talk) 23:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
They need to be contacted in regards to any individual discussion thats likely to have any significant effect on their project - If it has not been done yet - I would suggest it is done before the this progresses much further. -- Nbound (talk) 00:08, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Please note that name change issues extend beyond transgender articles. For example, it is fairly common in the United States for a person converting to Islam to adopt a new name (see Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul Jabbar). This name change similarly reflects a rejection of their life prior to that conversion (Malcolm X described it as shedding his "slave name"). Where any such name changes occur, more recent sources should be given more weight in determining the proper article title. bd2412T02:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Question: Is the issue of whether the article is a BlP at all relevant? Is this assumed to apply only to BLPs (e.g. respecting the subject's wishes)? Would BLP policy be mentioned? StAnselm (talk) 10:28, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Another suggested solution
First a quick recap of relevant policies and practices:
Underlying issue is about 'any real name change', not gender. The broader issue is any name change at all, since article title usually only reflects gender as a result of the name. (Example - if someone called "Mark" in the news had asked to be known as "John" because "Mark" was their name while being abused as a child, and it is painful and would be preferred to leave behind, would we change the article title? Similar considerations apply)
Usual default policy. Generally, in principle, we title articles, including biographies, after the topic's common or significant usage in sources (to summarize the general idea).
Legal/'real' name is irrelevant here. We do not defer to "legal/real" names at all. (For example, DJs or similar may be titled "DJ Cool".) So "legal name" is not given deference just because it's the legal name. It might be used anyway but that's only since most of the time it is in fact the same as the common use name. So legal/real name is a red herring.
BLP requires great deference to matters that can deeply impact a person, but we must still be neutral and accurate. In BLP terms, we show great deference to a person's choice of gender, of which their name is a core expression and often extremely important to them. However this is not a license to rewrite all matters at the whim of the subject.
Genuine name change may not involve legal documentation. In a number of jurisdictions a person can change name by simple use or declaration. So no legal formality need exist. Some people have done this repeatedly or to make a point, sometimes using increasingly absurd names for fun. But some change names because of a real and significant sense it's crucial to them, and will feel hurt if others don't treat their choice seriously. So there will be times we want to respect it, but perhaps also times we don't.
Overall the missing criteria that seem to work here is whether there is good evidence that the intention to change [publicly used? most commonly used?] name is a genuine and enduring one, and appears likely to be non-temporary.
No one has argued that BLP or any other policy is a license to "rewrite all matters at the whim of the subject." Rest assured that no one making a sincere announcement of a gender identity transition does so on a whim. And most who reach the point of making a public announcement of their transition will not subsequently return to their former identity. Which is why the issue of how to handle name changes for transgender people is NOT comparable to some of the other kinds of name changes that have been suggested in this discussion as being relevant. While there are reasons, for example, that Wikipedia should consider deferring to a performer's request that he or she be referred to by a particular name, performers are far more likely to announce changes of their names on a whim (eg, Sean Combs). The motivations behind many of these other kinds of name changes are very different and in many cases not likely to be as enduring as in the case of transgender transitions. Dezastru (talk) 15:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
The question is not about motivation, nor questioning sincerity and significance. So saying it wouldn't be on a whim answers a point nobody's questioned. The issue here is Wikipedia article titling. If we added the above clause, then it would allow the genuine cases where it's a non-temporary sentiment that seems to be genuine and enduring to be recognized immediately within titles, without opening doors for transient, dubious, uncertain or possibly volatile name changes that we wouldn't want jumped on but would like to see more certainty first. FT2(Talk | email)17:02, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Just curious as to how (or if) people would apply WP:POVNAMING to the issue of transgender name changes. I read it as saying we should the follow the sources, even if they are seemingly biased. Blueboar (talk) 12:00, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Blueboar, I was unaware of that bit of policy, but was thinking of exactly the same issue. While I do not think there should be or needs to be a policy that specifically deals with the naming of articles for transgender people and that the current general policy on dealing with name changes (of both people and non-people) is sufficient, sometimes whether or not a name is the "common" one is a political matter. Is the country name "Burma" or "Myanmar"? Wikipedia says it's "Burma", but that is the "common" name because most countries refuse to accept "Myanmar" as a name for political reasons.
While this is a long time before Wikipedia was created, Muhammad Ali's name change was rejected by a lot of people in the media at first also for political (and racist and Islamophobic reasons), so had Wikipedia been around at the time the article would have remained with the title "Cassius Clay" for some time after he had changed his name. Wikipedia does have an article called "Star Wars Kid", which is about Ghyslain Raza, who made the infamous video of himself with a lightsaber. The experience of the video going viral was traumatic for him and being known as "Star Wars Kid" was not what he wanted, but the article does use that as it is the "common" name for him.
So for now I think that the policy should stay the same, but if any change is to be seriously considered it should not be a special caveat for transgender people. If considerations of bias in how things and people are named is going to be reconsidered with regard to article naming conventions, it should be a more general discussion. 99.192.67.148 (talk) 12:22, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I think we have to be cautious in using wikipedia, or our article titles, to try to be progressive. Ultimately, wikipedia should be a mirror of society. If society is rather crap on a particular point, then wikipedia should likely be the same - without purposefully offending of course. In the example of a trans name, suppose Joe comes out and says he now wants to be called Mary. If 99% of sources out there ignore his request, then we probably should too - even if it hurts Joe to the core. If we get into the business of trying to improve society, rather than document it, then we have strayed from our NPOV mission. In any case, we also should make clear that article titles are not the same thing as people's names.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 12:36, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think it is about trying to improve society or advance a cause, it is about trying to determine good editorial policies. While we are a mirror of society in the sense that our factual content is necessarily limited to the factual content of our reliable sources, we set out own editorial policies. Those policies determine which other publications we consider to be reliable in the first place. (e.g. There is an overwhelming amount of tabloid trash available, which we most definitely do not mirror.) On this point, what do the most reliable sources suggest? I would consider the most reliable sources to be scientific and medical literature on transgender people, which support using the name that does not misgender the person.
To address the initial post in the section, I would say that yes, POVNAMING absolutely applies, either way you cut it. Either we respect express transgender identities, or we do not. It's a political decision either way; there is no purely neutral out for us. There is very strong support for respecting them in the scientific and medical communities, which is what determines the issue for me. On the other hand, there is very little support for respecting them in society at large.--Trystan (talk) 16:34, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm not sure this is the case. We're seeing active debate within major media outlets right now - not all have come down on the same side, but the debate is there. I'm not suggesting we follow tabloids, I'm suggesting we do what we've always done, follow RS, even in the case of TG people. If, for whatever reason, RS don't follow, we shouldn't either, no matter what that person says. We ignore name changes all the time, we should be able to do so for TG people too, if sources point us that way.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 20:15, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Part of this issue is not encyclopedic in nature. It has to do with respecting one's right to self identify, regardless of outside intervention. In some ways this may actually make it encyclopedic in nature, in that the subject themselves has made a public declaration. We live in a world where these issues are not cut and dry or black and white. Consensus should determine the outcome.--Mark21:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
But consensus has already developed WP:AT here, with lots of thought and reasons behind it. One of the problems I see with the whole Manning discussion, and the discussion here, is that we are treating Wikipedia as if it were a news source - but we are tertiary, not secondary, so the considerations that NY Times might apply should not apply to us. There is a HUGE difference between "respecting one's right to self identify" and "decide the title of an article" - one is about how you relate to a person, the other is what you put in bold letters at the top of a page that covers that person. They are usually the same, but not always - and besides Cat Stevens, there are LOTs of other examples (such as Prince, etc) where a person's own self-identity does not align with the title of the article. Our goal is to provide the greatest utility for the greatest number, and that applies to article titles especially. If you say "it doesn't matter that much, you can have redirects", then that same argument can be turned against you. The reason COMMONNAME is powerful is because it is based fundamentally on the issue of what is best for the reader, while balancing with the needs of the subject (e.g. not choosing a name they find patently offensive).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 21:45, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Failing to change the article title to the transgender person's preferred name directly harms him or her by slowing the public's acceptance of the new identity. It also harms him or her by effectively declaring, in bold print at the top of the page (and in large bold letters in a prominent location on the first page for Google search results), that others know better what is best for him or her. What harm is done to the reader to redirect from his or her search term to an article with a title preferred by the transgender person? The opening sentence of the body of the article, if not the lede, will likely include a reference to their pre-transition name. The term the reader originally searched for will be honored, to the extent that it will lead the reader to an article on the subject of interest. So no harm at all is done to the reader when the article is titled according to the transgender subject's preferred name. In fact, if a reader searched for the pre-transition name, it's probably because the reader is unaware that the person has undergone a name change, or the reader cannot remember what the new name is. So putting the new name at the top of the page in bold letters helps educate the reader, which, after all, is our ultimatel goal. Dezastru (talk) 00:16, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Please remember that Wikipedia is not the place to WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS... it is not Wikipedia's job to speed the public's acceptance of a new identity. Our job is to accurately reflect the public's acceptance (or lack of acceptance) of the new identity. If the public accepts the identity... wonderful... Wikipedia should and will reflect that acceptance by changing the title of our article. But... if the public actually rejects the new identity, Wikipedia has to accurately reflect that rejection by keeping the title at the old (publicly preferred) name. That's what occurred in the Cat Stevens case. Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
It's not Wikipedia's job to speed the public's acceptance of a new identity, true, but neither is it Wikipedia's job to stand in the way of the public's being informed of the change of identity, which is what occurs when Wikipedia holds media organizations as being more reliable on the subject of a person's name than the person him- or herself. Wikipedia's job is to provide readers with information while doing the least harm to subjects of BLPs as possible. Dezastru (talk) 17:52, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Lets wait on this
Right now the above section is a mess, it is clear that the people supporting the move from Chelsea to Bradley are choosing Suggestion 3 while the people who Oppose the move and want Chelsea as a name are choosing Option 2. We should wait until after this hype has died down to get more of a neutral consensus. Not only that but people are also coming here directly from the move discussion page as the two are linked. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 22:51, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
Totally agree... it is never a good idea to change policy when emotions are high over a specific issue. That's how you end up with unintended consequences that nobody thought about at the time. Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Some thoughts
Hi everyone,
I noticed the discussion has been closed. I was away from Wikipedia for the weekend (everyone needs some time off) and didn't see most of what has been written. I do want to address some of the points that have come up and lay out what I feel about the future of this discussion.
First off, I want to thank the contributors for the thoughtful and varied responses. I've seen new interpretations of existing policy and new explanations of why transgender issues are so important. I was particularly struck by Deliriousandlost's notion that one's name is a deeply personal and important aspect of one's identity. One wishes to be referred to using one's preferred name and gender, and that's quite understandable.
Along those same lines, I'm conflicted about what role Wikipedia should play in transgender issues. It cuts both ways: we have a responsibility to report based on reliable sources, but also to be sensitive to biographies of living persons. The notion that we are beholden to the truth and to accuracy is quite admirable ("We can be very very accurate though" -- Nbound). I feel the same way in some sense. However, for better or for worse the reality is that we report what reliable sources report, even though they may be somewhat or wholly inaccurate. So, try as we may, we are not allowed under policy to correct what we may see as wrongdoings on the part of the media. This really gets to the fundamentals of what Wikipedia is: are we a force for social justice? I think the most common belief is that we are not. Whether we should make exceptions to that rule is a matter of debate, and was the focus of the discussion I created. I hope we can have further discussions, along the lines I laid out but also along different dimensions.
In terms of the options I presented, I appreciate the comments from several people that option 1 was in fact very similar to existing policy. I had not noticed that clause in the policy and it helps shed more light for me on how to proceed.
The policy itself is simply unsatisfactory. It does not provide the necessary clarity as to articles about transgender people. The fact that so many of us are debating what to call the Manning article makes it clear that the policy is not sufficient, and does not cover the topic sufficiently. I would support a portion of the page specifically dedicated to transgender individuals, as it would make absolutely clear what should be done in such cases, where sensitivities about one's name may be heightened. Spelling out the word "transgender" on the policy page would leave absolutely no doubts as to how to handle such cases. To assume that transgender individuals can be grouped with other cases (such as Snoop Dogg --> Snoop Lion) does not seem to be satisfactory to some editors. Providing crystal clear guidance could help.
I agree that we should suspend the debate for the time being; even my own views continue to evolve rapidly. However, I ask that we do not let this narrow window of opportunity pass us by. Interest and motivation in this topic is at, perhaps, a record high on Wikipedia. We have this rare chance to clarify the policy in a healthy and constructive way.
It would be incredibly disappointing to maintain the status quo on such a polarizing issue. Just imagine: we keep the policy the same, then next year when someone else reveals a name change, we have the same debate again. That would be terribly inefficient and would distract from both editing substantive encyclopedic content (such as the article text itself) and from educating ourselves about transgender topics.
I appreciate all the discussion and I very much hope the debate will continue and the community will reach an agreeable consensus. CaseyPenk (talk) 20:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
Consistency detail
A pair of editors(@Red Slash:, @GrandDrake:) added "Unless a page has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation it should not be moved from one variety of English to a different kind in order to maintain consistency." to the one-sentence "definition" of consistency. I don't see discussion, nor do I see it as a paraphrase of comments elsewhere in this policy. Comments? — Arthur Rubin(talk)18:35, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't know if it needs to be stated in the "Deciding on an article title" section but this information can be found in the section on "National varieties of English". --GrandDrake (talk) 19:31, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I don't think this should be part of the one sentence "definition" of consistency... It's perfectly OK to move an article title from one variety of English to another if there is consensus to do so... what we want to avoid is constant shifting back and forth (edit warring). To the extent that consistency is a factor in the move, that should be part of the discussion that is held while reaching (or not reaching) consensus. Blueboar (talk) 20:33, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm more troubled because it's ambiguous. What is the "consistency" that is being referenced? Within the article? Across articles? both? neither? Bonus points if you can explain how, or if, this change would have affected the infamous RMs for the Yogurt article, and also the RM for the Strained Yoghurt article. AgnosticAphidtalk00:28, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
But MOS#Retaining the existing varietydoes allow for changing the version of English within the article.... provided there is consensus to do so. I think it can be taken as granted that any discussion of change to the text would by default also include discussion of a change to the title, and vise versa. Blueboar (talk) 17:10, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
In more detail; consistency is (and should be, contrary to B2C's statements) a factor in article naming; and WP:ENGVAR "informs" WP:COMMONNAME, but no one of the five factors is overriding. I don't think it is more necessary to note that consistency does not override WP:ENGVAR than any of the other factors. — Arthur Rubin(talk)18:13, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
Recently I have noted that some editors evoke WP:COMMONNAME in move discussions to suggest that most common layman's usage (as determined through recognizability and usage in general public, ngram results, google hits, etc.) trumps the most common usage within the field of expertise that relates to the article topic (the sources that would be reliable for writing the article). This RfC asks you to provide your opinion and arguments about whether WP:COMMONNAME should be interpreted as an injunction to follow layman's usage if it conflicts with expert usage, and whether you think current policy should be clarified in this regard.
Survey:
Comment I think this interpretation of policy is incorrect and problematic because it leads to situations in which a title can be divorced from the usage in reliable sources (e.g. all the reliable sources use one title, non-reliable sources and/or general usage uses another - so we adopt the latter in spite of all the reliable sources using the former). I think that this interpretation conflicts with the passus in WP:COMMONNAME saying that "Though official, scientific, birth, original, or trademarked names are often used for article titles, the term or name most typically used in reliable sources is generally preferred." I take this to mean that common name tells us to judge which title is more common through using the sources that are reliable for writing about the topic, not that we must blindly follow layman's usage. Even so, because of its apparent liability to this misunderstanding, I think we should amend policy to say clearly that assessments of what is the COMMONNAME should be based on the reliable sources for the topic, not on general usage frequency in the wider public. I don't consider this a change to policy, but a clarification of the originally intended policy. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·19:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Comment. I'm not sure a hard-and-fast rule here would be helpful or address any known problem. Sometimes we should eschew common usage which is inexact or too informal, even if it is the most common (e.g. "correction fluid" not "Tipex"). But neither is esoteric expertese desirable in titling (e.g. "orangutan" not "pongo"). Maybe the OP could provide examples of where they think problems can arise. Formerip (talk) 20:08, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
It can arise for example in relation to names of historical persons or ethnic groups that were previously known by an incorrect, mangled or derogatory name but where historians or ethnologists have since adopted another convention - often the earlier name lives on in popular works and things named after the earlier name and will have higher frequencies of overall usage even when they no longer appear in recent literature about the subjects. I am of course coming from a specific discussion that I have in mind but I am not going to link to it because I want this to be a more general discussion of policy, not about that specific case.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·20:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Neither - WP:COMMONNAME is not about laymen vs specialists. When the policy uses the word "common" it is talking about frequency of usage, not the academic status of the person using it. COMMONNAME calls for an examination of all reliable sources (specialist and lay). We are looking to see the frequency of usage in reliable sources that discuss the topic, regardless of whether those sources are "lay" or "specialist". If it is clear that one term is used significantly more frequently than other terms, we use that term in our articles. We don't actually care whether that term comes from "laymen" or "specialists" (and it is important to note that sometimes the specialist term actually can be used more frequently... the prime example is in our flora articles... where layman's names for flowers is very localized, but the "scientific" name is universal).
Now, when usage is mixed, and a true COMMONNAME can not be determined, I would certainly give more weight to specialist's terms than to laymen's terms... and that weight might make a good tie breaker. But the point is that we don't give an automatic preference to either. Blueboar (talk) 20:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with your notion that WP:COMMONNAME is about frequency - it is about frequency within the domain of relevant knowledge and it weighs frequency against a number of other concerns (I also disagree with the idea of reliable lay sources - at least in my field there is no such thing). User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·23:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
I believe newspapers, for example, would be reliable lay sources. It’s not uncommon for the reporter of a story to not be a highly educated expert on the subject of the story. —Frungi (talk) 01:17, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Neither – while I agree that WP:COMMONNAME is widely abused and inappropriately "evoked", I don't think trying to make it more prescriptive will help. It is just one strategy in support of recognizability and naturalness. Sometimes a layman's term is more natural or recognizable than a specialist's term, but we deal with those in a variety of ways in different domains, sometimes leaning one way or the other. Dicklyon (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Neither – there is a need to clarify the way that WP:COMMONNAME should be used, but this isn't it. The subsection title is "Use commonly recognizable names". It expands on one of the five criteria, recognizability, to be balanced by editors in choosing an article title. The problem, as I see it, is that some editors interpret "COMMONNAME" as trumping the other four criteria, regardless of how they decide on what is "common". I agree with Dicklyon: trying to be more prescriptive isn't the answer. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Well... to quibble COMMONNAME isn't just a way to determine Recognizability... it helps to determine Naturalness as well (since the most Recognizable name is also likely to be considered the most natural). That's why it is such a good tool for determining the best article title, it hits what are usually considered the two most important of the five principles. Blueboar (talk) 23:00, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
"Usually considered" by whom? Not by me. The most important should be Precision. When editors choose common but ambiguous titles we end up with more and more article titles with parenthesised disambiguation, which helps no-one as far as I can see, and certainly doesn't lead to Naturalness. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Neither - COMMONNAME isnt a trump card, its to be weighed up against other options, and alot of other things come into play, such as: ambiguity, inaccuracy, non-neutrality, vulgarity or pedantry. This is exactly why we have numerous naming conventions for specific problem areas. I think we need to be much clearer about this aswell. -- Nbound (talk) 22:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
Another quibble... both this policy and the NPOV policy actually implies that COMMONNAME does "trump" non-neutrality concerns. Blueboar (talk) 23:04, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
And if the common name is either incorrect or confusing - what then? Also NPOV doesnt imply any such thing, the common name isnt necessarily free from POV problems (it often is, which is why common name can help; but not always). -- Nbound (talk) 00:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Is there anyone actually calling either of those wars the things you said, probably not... if all sources are in agreeance to a name there, isnt any NPOV issue. if its a contentious issue, there may be a reason to choose a neutrally worded name. For example, some kind of issue between two religious groups, one side might refer to it by a negative name, one side might by a positive name, it may be best to choose a name from the middleground, as long as it is reasonably obviously referring to the thing in question. And as always, with any WP rule, use common sense! - furthermore there are other reasons (some listed above) why other names may be chosen over the "common name" -- Nbound (talk) 08:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Comment I am a little surprised at the "neither" comments - given that I didn't phrase the question as either-or. I also didn't propose being prescriptive, merely clarifying the policy wording so that it becomes LESS prescriptive by clearly stating that COMMONNAME does not necessarily privilege overall frequency over frequency of use within the relevant domain of knowledge. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·23:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
I believe that COMMONNAME is:
One tool among many, and not always the best tool.
Best interpreted in reference to the frequency in high-quality and English-language reliable sources, not all sources or all webpages.
Neither it has to be the most common usage in reliable sources. This does not mean that the sources are restricted to specialist publications, only that the source be reliable. WP:JARGON clearly indicates we should not be restricted to just specialist publications (such as publications not in English, which is being used to move articles around, because it is the "original language" source). -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 04:58, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
Exactly. It all depends on the topic, how different usage is between specialized and non-specialized publications, precisely how specialized the publications are, etc. An article about some aspect of nuclear physics which is rarely covered in the popular media is quite different from an article about a well known historical event, for example. There is no substitute for editorial judgement; no "magic formula" which will avoid the need for discussion in problem cases. Peter coxhead (talk) 08:25, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
WP:JARGON does not cover it as it is a MOS guideline and is neither part of the AT policy of its naming conventions (guidelines). It is covered in the AT policy by "Recognizability – The title is a name or description of the subject that someone familiar with, although not necessarily an expert in, the subject will recognize" (my emphasis). -- PBS (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
What does it mean to be familiar with? To me it means to have read reliable sources about the topic written by experts. Reading a book by an expert doesn't make you a specialist but it makes you familiar with specialist usage.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw·03:15, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
Theres going to be examples where lay people with an interest will not recognise article titles, purely because a topic has been drilled down far enough that no lay person could be expected to know about it. Another possibility is that a lay persons concept or idea of something could be at best ambiguous; or at worst completely incorrect. As has been said by many here, these policies, especially common name, arent catchall rules, they are tools. Apply common sense and weigh up article names using any and all criteria available; including, but not limited to common name. -- Nbound (talk) 21:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
This discussion has been citedhere. The citation appears to represent contributors here User:WhatamIdoingUser:Dicklyon 76.65.128.222 User:MaunusUser:FormerIPUser:NboundUser:BlueboarUser:Frungi as supporting that the basic-ASCII html version of an East European name is the WP:COMMONNAME for that person. For all I know it's quite possible that some of the editors in the discussion here do believe that the basic-ASCII html version of an East European name is the WP:COMMONNAME for that person, however I see it nowhere in the discussion here, and we just added François Mitterrand (which is unicode, not basic-ASCII) to WP:COMMONNAME partly to prevent exactly this kind of misunderstanding. In ictu oculi (talk) 05:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Actually, our Mitterrand example intentionally says nothing about the ASCII vs Unicode issue... The example given is "François Mitterrand (not: François Maurice Adrien Marie Mitterrand)"... it is an example of where a person's first and last names are commonly used, but the full name (with middle names included) is not. Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
I remember the discussion... you may have had that intent in mind, but I am not sure the rest of us had the same intent. (I know I didn't). Blueboar (talk) 00:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
Well, if the two people who were primarily involved in adding the Mitterand example were/are not in agreement as to its intent... is there any wonder that that others disagree as to its intent? Blueboar (talk) 14:10, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
Keep the recommendation that it be based on usage by Reliable Sources (which can include popular sources such as newspapers). To base it on general lay usage (however measured - Google hits, ngrams, polls, etc.) rather than Reliable Sources would degrade the encyclopedia. You would wind up with articles titled "Princess Di" and "A-Rod". You might as well base the encyclopedia on a Family Feud model, where the winning answer was based on "Survey says...." even if it was factually incorrect. --MelanieN (talk) 17:17, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
Comment Sometimes a common term refers to a specific condition (common cold equals viral rhinopharyngitis) and when it does we should use the common term. Sometimes the common term equals many condition (heart attack could mean either cardiac arrest or myocardial infarction, different condition need different articles). We need to use common sense. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:48, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
While absolutely agreeing that we need to use common sense (which, as per the cliché, is not always common), we also need to keep remembering that WP:COMMONNAME is just an expansion of one of the five criteria used in deciding on an article title. "Precision" applies in the frequent cases where a single common term corresponds to more than one article topic. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:27, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for being a bit late to this party! With respect to the exact way in which you phrased your question, I think that in the unlikely event the name used in reliable lay sources is hopelessly in conflict with the name used in reliable expert sources, I do indeed think that the lay sources should triumph. The reason why is pretty well stated in this this essay that another editor wrote perhaps a little to stridently on perhaps a slightly different topic. Basically, wikipedia is a general knowledge encyclopedia, not a specialist source for experts, so why should we follow the generalists when there's a conflict. For instance, as the person said above, and assuming these two things are the same, the article should be named orangutan and not pongo even if biologists exclusively use pongo in their literature. Our readers aren't likely to be expert biologists. (I don't know anything about orangutans or pongos (?) so I'm sorry if this is a terrible example.) Nor should we be running around using super-obscure medical and legal names when more recognizable alternatives will do. I am not sure given the way this discussion is phrased that you adequately considered the possibility of reliable non-expert sources. With regard to the latter question, I'm not familiar enough with COMMONNAME disputes to know whether it needs to be clarified. Sorry. AgnosticAphidtalk06:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Support clarification as suggested by User:Maunus. Wikipedia should reflect the recent expert knowledge, not layman names. I think that follows from what sources are considered reliable. --Space simian (talk) 09:22, 31 August 2013 (UTC). As an example: alcohol should refer to the article about alcohols and not ethanol; i.e. it should reflect usage by reliable expert (chemist) sources. (And regarding orangutans, I suspect experts refer to them as orangutans for the most part as well.) --Space simian (talk) 07:38, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
Sponsors and "naming rights"
It is common, particularly for sports stadiums and similar buildings, for sponsors to have temporary naming rights to a building. This means the official name for a building may change frequently. Sometimes the common name reflects these changes, and sometimes it doesn't. Generally the Wikipedia convention is to stick to the more generic name for the article, even if the sponsored official name becomes fairly common. However that practice isn't currently reflected in this policy, or as a separate written convention. Should it be?
Emirates Stadium - generic name is "Ashburton Grove (Stadium)" but it was named the Emirates before building was completed and has never had an alternative official name
I'm not so sure that it is accurate to say there is "Wikipedia convention" to stick to the old name... It really is more a question of WP:COMMONNAME (do sources start using the new "sponsor" name, or do they reject it and continue to use the old name).
International organisations that take over a city or a country for a jamboree throw up some interesting naming problems. For example they will inst that a venue does not include a commercial name that has not paid them to use the name, so the Aviva Stadium (which IMHO ought to be called by its old stadium name Landsdown Road) was called the "Dublin Arena" for the 2011 UEFA Europa League Final, and more recently The O2 Arena was called the "North Greenwich Arena" for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
As an example consider when the Welsh Rugby Union renamed Cardiff Arms Park the National Stadium everyone including commentators in reliable sources ignored them and continued to call it the Arms Park. But when the old stadium was knocked down and a new one was built the WRU christened it the Millennium Stadium and that name stuck. So I think COMMONNAME covers this issue of naming stadiums and there is no need for a specific paragraph, although I think it might be a good idea to add "third party" before "reliable sources" in the phrase "then more weight should be given to the name used in third party reliable sources published after the name change than in those before the change" to cover purely commercial changes of name, (this is something which I had already considered proposing over the discussion above about #Article titles for transgender people. -- PBS (talk) 17:10, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
I think this is the province of COMMONNAME, with the Etihad forming part of the borderline (as that name has easily entered into the footballing lexicon, but not fully). Sceptre(talk)17:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC)
A similar problem has come up with shopping centres. Various companies will buy out the complexes and slap a uniform corporate branding upon them. However locals frequently carry on using the existing name, which is often restored after the next buyout, but the web searches can be dominated by chains using the new name in postal addresses on their branch list rather than by the usage in the local press and various local organisations. Timrollpickering (talk) 23:01, 1 September 2013 (UTC)
