Talk:Pontiac (automobile)/Archives/2015

Pontiac as a Chevrolet Companion Make

Pontiac was never a companion make to Chevrolet (see first paragraph). Pontiac was a companion make to Oakland and was a product of the Oakland Motor Company subsidiary of GM through 1931. In 1932, after the last Oakland was built in the fall of 1931, GM renamed the Oakland Motor Company to Pontiac Motor Divsion. From then until 1984 Pontiac was a manufacturing and engineering division of GM, after which it became a marketing division on its own and later a marketing division along with GMC Truck: Pontiac-GMC Division. Pontiac was never paired with Chevrolet.18:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)205.148.53.200 (talk) 18:14, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 13 November 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved (non-admin closure). sst✈^(discuss) 16:08, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

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Pontiac → Pontiac (automobile brand) – I think this article should be moved to Pontiac (automobile brand) because the brand name is not the primary topic of "Pontiac". I would contend that the Ottawa warleader after whom the brand is named is the primary topic, but acknowledge that this may be controversial. At the very least I think that it is evident that the car is not "much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term", nor does it have"substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term" - and hence it cannot be the primary topic, but should be disambiguated. The topic "Pontiac" should go directly to the disambiguation page. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 01:58, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I would strongly encourage participants to actually take the time to read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and explicitly argue why the car brand should be considered (or not) the primary topic of the name.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 04:40, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support as proposer. The now defunct car brand has considerably less long-term significance than either the town or the person. Its use is inflated in sources by the fact that it is a brand and therefore its google presence is driven by the market.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:07, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose. There are over 1000 article links to Pontiac about the cars. There are 22 links to Pontiac about the person. The main source of confusion seems to be between Pontiac cars and Pontiac, Michigan. Rmhermen (talk) 02:51, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

This is not a valid argument about status as primary topic but a simple artefact of Wikipedias unequal coverage of different kinds of topics - and a an artefact of the fact that the car is currently located at the title "Pontiac" - you actually cannot tell from incoming links to this article whether they are meant to link to the car or the person. The links to the person are spread out over at least three different redirects. In any case even if the argument is accepted the car brand is still not a valid primary topic and should be disambbiguated anyway.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 02:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose how about that Pontiac automobile gets 6.25 million google hits and Pontiac native American gets 441,000? John from Idegon (talk) 03:22, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that those search terms are ridiculous (for example the Search Pontiac + "Indian" gets 7,5 million, and Pontiac + "chief" gets 830,000), this is still a simple artefact of the automatic difference of coverage that a brand name gets just by virtue of existing. This is not a valid argument that this is primary topic according to the policy. Note that my argument is that there is no primary topic here. This is supported by the fact that 1. It is not primary in usage since when correcting for the fact that a brand name will always get more traffic than an historical person, users are equally likely to search for the person as the brand. And it also is not the case that the car brand will have more lasting significance (if anything it will have considerably less, given that in 100 years the brand will be about as significant to history as betamax, whereas Pontiac's historical significance will remain unchanged).·maunus · snunɐɯ· 03:33, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose As a non-American car enthusiast, I'm familiar with such cars as the Pontiac Firebird and the Pontiac GTO but have never heard of the Indian. As for the comment above about the situation in 100 years, well, we can always change the article names in the future when the reader trends/biases change.  Stepho  talk  04:28, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC specifically states that "what comes first to mind" is not a valid argument. Furthermore, you have indeed heard of the "Indian", since his name is on the car.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 04:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Apologies, I should have explained further. You are right that what comes to my mind, as an individual, is not a valid argument. But what comes to mind of the majority of users is an argument (search for "with respect to usage" in WP:PRIMARYTOPIC). What I was trying to point out was that non-Americans are probably not thinking about the Indian and that car enthusiasts (even American ones) are also probably not thinking about the Indian. From there, I was hoping that would see that we have 3 main audiences here - locals (who were probably taught about the Indian in school), followers of Indian history and car enthusiasts. I suspect (but haven't proved) that the car enthusiasts outnumber the locals and Indian followers by a considerable margin.  Stepho  talk  07:47, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose: I am not convinced the other uses trump the car brand. OSX (talk • contributions) 07:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

They do not have to trump it, as long as they demonstrate that the brand is not the primary topic.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 17:05, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Isn't that exactly what the term "trump" means?

No, not if you read WP:PRIMARYTOPIC - because not all topics have a primary topic - as long as there are other topics that a significant group of readers may consider to be more significant then a topic is not primary, even if it "trumps" the others. As long as there is serious competition there is no primary topic.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Support - For me, this is about comparing usage versus long term significance. Clearly Chief Pontiac has much greater long term significance. I don't know that Pontiac the car has more usage than Chief Pontiac and Pontiac, Michigan combined and I suspect the usage is fairly close between the three with no overwhelming use (especially if you look only at use since 2010). Also, I don't think we need to wait for the brand's popularity to wane further. The third edit to this page (in 2003) was, in part, an attempt to make the page about the chief. That was 6 years before production stopped, it is now 6 years after. The fifth edit (also in 2003) nearly made the page a disambig (before disambigs were popular, I think). Smmurphy^(Talk) 08:03, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose Mainly for the reasons above, with with the additional comment that for non-US residents - who have been known to use Wikipedia on occasion - it would come as a great surprise that there even is a Chief Pontiac, regardless that his likeness appears on the badge of the cars, sorry automobiles. In a global view, the brand is clearly (again for reasons outlined above) primary compared to the person. Chaheel Riens (talk) 08:46, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Support - There would have never been an automobile line called "Pontiac" had there not first been an actual leader named Pontiac. Therefore, this person should be the primary topic for an encyclopedia article. This is similar to the proposals in 2009 and 2011 by Chevy Corvette enthusiasts to make the car the primary topic. It continues to be a "surprise" for some people, but the name for a type of ship was established before it was applied to the line of cars. Therefore, Corvette remains the primary topic in factual encyclopedias. Of course, there is far more described about the line of cars on web pages compared to the mentions concerning the small warship. Thus, using the number of "hits" on an Internet search engine is a red herring. The Google numbers are irrelevant and only divert from the original use of the Pontiac name. Counting what is found on the Internet leads towards false conclusions. On the other hand, encyclopedia articles use the full name of the French explorer and founder of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, while the primary topic of just "Cadillac" is the line of GM automobiles. This follows the convention applied to naming of cars for the founders of companies (such as Louis Chevrolet, Charles Williams Nash, Louis Renault, Walter Chrysler, etc.) Likewise, automobile names that have been taken from somewhere else are not the primary topics for encyclopedia articles. A few examples include the "Pontiac LeMans" (not just Le Mans), "Auburn Automobile", "Viking (automobile)", "Iso (automobile)", "Jeffery (automobile)", "Toyota Avalon" (not just Avalon), etc. Thanks! CZmarlin (talk) 18:40, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Comment/Question - at least two posters here have claimed that the person has a greater long-term significance than the vehicle. Can this claim be corroborated? Given that the only supplied evidence so far has been Google hits, which is at best inconclusive, and in fact seems to show that the automobile has a greater number of hits - and the page stats themselves show that the "Pontiac"[1] term has a much greater level of interaction than the "Pontiac (Ottawa leader)"[2] article - 19,000 views against 170 views. Given such a variance you cannot say "Ah, but those looking at 'Pontiac' may have been looking for the person" - there's just too much of a discrepancy.

In essence - where is the support that the person has the greater prominence than the vehicle brand. The claim that this is so hasn't been substantiated. Chaheel Riens (talk) 17:23, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

The vehicle is no longer fabricated. In 100 years no similar vehicles will exist and automobiles will be a quaint technology of the 20th century. Pontiac is a significant person in US history as the main organizer of resistance to US colonization in the 18th century. He will still be that in 500 years.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 18:22, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that is nonsense. One can just as easily say that the Indian Wars will just be a trivial bit of history in 500 years. There is no support for your statement. There is also no support for my take, I realize that. I doubt automobile technology will ever be trivialized. It was and is the single biggest leap forward in transportation technology that has occurred, and the next big one, flight, devolved parallel to it with most of the same technology. Pontiac is a car. I know of no one in the Midwest US, where the Indian war's are taught as part of the school curriculum, that even refers to the Indian leader as simply "Pontiac". It is always Chief Pontiac. John from Idegon (talk) 21:24, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

As for nonsense we can exchange that epithet. Your argument boils down to nonsense of a particularly narrowminded, ethnocentric and myopic kind.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 21:57, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

No personal attacks please - accusing somebody of having "a particularly narrowminded, ethnocentric and myopic kind" is unlikely to sway people to your way of thinking. Chaheel Riens (talk) 22:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

That is an accurate characterization of the argument and not a personal attack. Making an idiotic argument does not make one an idiot. Nor does making an myopic and ethnocentric argument make someone a racist. We all do sometimes, but that does not make the arguments valid.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:32, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Aw, shucks. Maunus stopped just short of Godwin's Law. :)  Stepho  talk  22:21, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

No characterizing an ethnocenctric and paochial argument as such is not comparable to using a nazi comparison where it is not warranted. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 22:32, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.