Talk:Milošević (surname)

primary topic or disambiguation

Please see Talk:Milošević. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 15:34, 28 May 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 25 March 2022

Milošević (surname) → Milošević – I've tried to discuss this previously at Talk:Milošević#primary topic?, but nobody seems to have cared enough to respond, instead people just occasionally came in and asserted a contrary position without much of a rationale, sigh.

The basic contention for the other side seems rather obvious - the Serbian president who became infamous in the 1990s is the primary topic, e.g. if we just look at https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/massviews/?platform=all-access&agent=user&source=wikilinks&range=latest-20&sort=views&direction=1&view=list&target=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87%20(surname) where we can see that they are way up there on top of the list (disregarding the cruft).

However, he still had a very generic Serbian surname, and he doesn't necessarily have that much of an edge in long-term significance compared to all the other holders of this common Serbian surname.

If we look at the analysis of traffic coming to these terms (Milošević and Milosevic) compared to Slobodan Milošević, at e.g. https://pageviews.wmcloud.org/?project=en.wikipedia.org&platform=all-access&agent=user&redirects=0&start=2018-07-01&end=2022-03-24&pages=Milosevic%7CMilo%C5%A1evi%C4%87%7CMilo%C5%A1evi%C4%87_(surname) the graphs are still all over the place, but clearly the level of interest seems to be entirely equivalent. More recently there's a spike, probably because of another war in eastern Europe where people mention Slobodan Milošević more - that too will pass, though.

That's why I'd continue to advocate the position that using the anthroponymy article as the navigational aid here is appropriate, because, simply put, I don't see any value in short-circuiting navigation for the reader - I don't see how anyone who strongly associates the term Milošević with Slobodan Milošević would ever not be served well with his listing on the surname article, which is a very straightforward concept. (Who is this reader who would be really unhappy that they were forced to open a page with a modicum amount of info about a surname while navigating to a surname holder? It's almost as if the purpose of an encyclopedia is to have people learn things!) --Joy [shallot] (talk) 06:54, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support. It's among the most common surnames in Serbia, and apart from Slobodan, very famous bearers include Savo Milošević, Boki Milošević and Slađana Milošević. Pageviews analysis do not seem to favor the politician. No such user (talk) 08:35, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support As the page says it is the 10th most common surname in Serbia. Gusfriend (talk) 10:47, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. The second pageviews link above isn't useful as it compares traffic for articles and for redirects, which aren't commensurable (articles get at least an order of magnitude more views than their redirects: WP:PPT). Actual usage can be seen in the Wikinav graph for the surname article (which is where Milošević redirects) [1]. Over 80% of its outgoing traffic goes to Slobodan (which may easily represent 100% of the onward clicks for those who arrived there following the Milošević redirect). I've had a look at the data for January as well (in the clickstream dataset, which is what Wikinav visualises), and there the percentage is even higher: the surname page got a total of 348 viesws for that month, whereas its link to Slobodan was clicked 330 times. This is a pretty strong case for a primary redirect. And it's not surprising: no matter how common the surname may be in Serbia, Slobodan Milošević is by far the most well known bearer internationally, and probably the only one who is commonly referred to in English by his surname alone. – Uanfala (talk) 15:26, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Given overall page views, I don't think anyone would assume anything other than a preponderance of the outgoing traffic would go there. The contention isn't that this is untrue, but that it's irrelevant, because, again, it's not like any of those users has had any problems navigating to Slobodan from the surname article.

As WP:D says, we want to apply the principle of least astonishment, and I don't see how any reader would be anywhere near astonished by the concept of looking up a person based on their surname and then having to note the existence of the surname. Maybe there's readers out there who see the word "Milosevic" and think this is not necessarily a surname, but maybe some sort of a pseudonym? But if so, how did they all successfully go from there to Slobodan Milosevic's article over the last few years? --Joy [shallot] (talk) 19:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, it seems that what you're arguing for is essentially the suspension, for surnames, of the existing guidelines on primary topics. Would you also consider promoting to the primary topic Stalin (name) or Putin (surname)? – Uanfala (talk) 22:20, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

No, I'm not, I'm saying there needs to be a more coherent rationale for the application of the popularity argument in WP:DPT - for example, "Stalin" can point to a single person because they are often mononymously referred to like that and they had a profound world-wide impact that is typically obvious to most readers with any knowledge of history, for example? And also there's a more convoluted situation with both Stalin (name) and Stalin (disambiguation) existing, which may mean we could actually lose some of the reader interest through extra complexity? None of these apply to Slobodan Milošević. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:45, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

Well, there are two aspects of primary topics: usage and long-term significance. You're completely discarding usage without making any argument that the surname has greater long-term significance than the politician. That's why it seemed, and still seems, to me that your argument is against the existing guidelines. – Uanfala (talk) 15:38, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose per User:Uanfala, this is a justified primary redirect. 162 etc. (talk) 16:49, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Uanfala and 162 etc. Although this surname is a common one in its native region, as far as the English-speaking world is concerned, anyone who would simply type "Milosevic" or, even more specifically, cut and paste the form with the diacritics — "Milošević" — is researching Slobodan Milošević, whose entry should carry the hatnote, "Milosevic" and "Milošević" redirect here. For other uses, see Milošević (surname). —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 17:32, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Uanfala and my Google Books search which indicates that all or nearly all of the top 30 Google Books results for "Milošević" are about Slobodan. (t · c) buidhe 17:52, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

As I mentioned already on your talk page in an earlier discussion, I can't confirm that claim - for me the search at https://www.google.com/search?q=Milo%C5%A1evi%C4%87&pws=0&tbm=bks is indeed littered with Slobodan but there's also a mention of a Bosiljka Bosa Milošević, a book from 1969, a book from 1975, a 1986 book by a Nikola Milošević within the top 30 results. As neither of those two people are actually listed as notable at Milošević (surname), it's doubtful that we can consider Google Books' algorithm as something very authoritative. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 20:03, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

If four results are not about the president, then almost 90% of them would be about him, right? That's why I said "almost all". (t · c) buidhe 23:08, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

My point was mostly that this specific set of results make it evident that the engine recognizes the fact it's a very generic search term by giving us apparent arbitrary stuff in the output. I.e. it didn't show us 90% Slobodan, 5% Savo, 3% some other notable person and so on, so we can't say that it's actually properly sorting output for us and giving us a truly meaningful assessment of this matter. We can only see that it functioned as a search engine in identifying the most likely search result early, and rest is largely meaningless, because the former part is what search engine users expect. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 08:58, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

• Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose per Uanfala. ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 19:04, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
• Support per nom. MrKeefeJohn (talk) 08:35, 26 March 2022 (UTC)