User talk:P.T. Aufrette

First Nagorno-Karabakh War

Hi P.T. Aufrette, in your move request you argued that the First was needed as a disambiguator. Given that is the case, is there a reason you are editing across articles to insert "First" as part of a proper name? CMD (talk) 10:36, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis: The page Nagorno-Karabakh War should now point to a disambiguation page, as I argued in the successful Requested Move. But I haven't changed it just yet, because articles using the old link should first be edited to point directly to the new title, instead of sending the user to a disambiguation page. That is what I'm doing now. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:56, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS, I am looking at each link on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes a more appropriate link is Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is an overview of all the wars and clashes. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 14:09, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is there any specific edit you disagree with, and if so, what would be your suggestion? -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 14:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

My suggestion would be not to use "First Nagorno-Karabak War" as a proper name, because it isn't one. This specifically applies to most if not all of your recent edits. Further, you're replacing already disambiguated instances, such as "1991-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh War", with "First Nagorno-Karabakh War", and I don't understand the reasoning behind that either. CMD (talk) 14:42, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis:The simplest way to link to a page is just to use the page's actual title. The problem with disambiguations involving years is the disagreement over exactly which year the war can be considered to have started. Over various Wikipedia pages I have seen 1988, 1989, 1991 and 1992. There were initial conflicts and then the bona-fide warfare broke out when the Soviet Union collapsed. So it may be simpler just to use a year-neutral version. But in many cases I did leave the years intact in my more recent edits. I still have trouble understanding your "proper name" objection. In the policies and guidelines pages, titles that differ only by capitalization are considered equivalent to one another except for specific cases like Ice Cube vs. Ice cube or Iron Maiden vs. Iron maiden (to use actual examples cited there) where, for example, some artist or work adopted a common term as a proper name or title, and the different capitalizations actually refer to entirely different things. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 14:58, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You are not using the term in titles, you are using the term as a proper noun within prose in sentences. You are treating a disambiguating adjective as part of the actual name of the event. CMD (talk) 15:10, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It would also be useful to know how you are determining which link is most appropriate. Changes like this one change the meaning of the sentence, contradicting the source at hand. CMD (talk) 15:13, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The "Martyrs' Day" holiday is not just for the first war with Armenians, it also marks the "Black January" event which was a crackdown by the central Soviet government. The name of the holiday, according to the Black January article, is literally "the Day of the Nationwide Sorrow". The Google translation of the the Azeri Wikipedia article cross-linked with Public holidays in Azerbaijan gives the name as "National Day of Mourning" and it also says: "Article 106 of the Labor Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan states: Every year, January 20 - the day of commemoration of the martyrs who died for the independence and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan - is a day of national mourning." Based on that, it seems clear that those deemed martyrs of the recent war will also be commemorated. I changed the link to the "overall conflict" page rather than routinely linking to the page for the first war only. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:08, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding your first point, I will make a greater effort to retain or adapt original link text rather than just replacing with the page title. But at least where the original link is simply Nagorno-Karabakh War I do feel the most sensible thing to do is to replace it with First Nagorno-Karabakh War. We may disagree, but at some point the disagreement risks devolving into "relitigating" the Move Request discussion. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:08, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Changes to the article text should not be based on them, especially when there is a reliable source already in place on the text being changed. On the use of "First" in prose, it is not the same as the move request. You are inserting the new article title as a proper noun in hundreds of articles, without any sources supporting this. CMD (talk) 16:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis:The Azeri Wikipedia excerpt I gave literally cites Article 106 of the Labor Code of the Republic of Azerbaijan. That is surely an unimpeachable source. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS, kindly do not revert back to linking to the disambiguation page, as you did here. A better way to proceed would have been to preserve the correct page link: 1988-1994 [[First Nagorno-Karabakh War|Nagorno-Karabakh War]] . -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe my actions are a logical consequence of the Requested Move outcome. You are making the same "proper noun" argument as you did in the discussion there, and I did address it at length with my own counterarguments there, which I don't wish to repeat here. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No, citing Wikipedia is not unimpeachable. This is specifically mentioned at WP:RSPRIMARY. The Azerbaijani Labor Code would itself, also be a primary source. And at least in that specific case, there was already a source on the page in question. In the RM, you specifically argued that the change was as a descriptive title, comparing it to the 2020 article with "just a normal application of WP:DESCRIPDIS". Your current edits are not treating it as a descriptive title. On better ways to proceed, I did make changes at a later point, and if that sort of formulation is better why are you instead treating the new title as a proper noun? CMD (talk) 16:37, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I am making edits by hand, rather than mechanically. That does not preclude making other changes in passing, or alternative edits. I look at the context, and in cases where linking to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a better choice, as it was in the example above, then I can choose to make that edit like any other ordinary edit, as a modification to the original link created by a previous editor. I don't agree that your formulations are better, I'm merely saying you should take care not to break the link to the actual page and inadvertently substitute back the old link that points to what will very soon be a disambiguation page. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 17:04, 19 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's not my formulation, you used it in early edits such as this one. It's unreasonable to ask others to fix the edits where you are spreading what based on the sources mentioned in the RM is a novel term throughout hundreds of articles. CMD (talk) 02:49, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't agree that it needs "fixing" at all. If the title of a Wikipedia article is "Quick Brown Fox", then it seems absurd to claim that the plain verbatim link [[Quick Brown Fox]] can never appear as such in any text in Wikipedia. What rule can you cite to justify such a claim? -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 04:34, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's how descriptive titles work. The lead of History of Azerbaijan opens with "The history of Azerbaijan", not "The History of Azerbaijan". CMD (talk) 05:13, 20 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Chipmunkdavis:Fair enough, but now you're calling it a descriptive title rather than a proper name. But in that case the WP:DESCRIPDIS disambiguation method was suitable after all, and there shouldn't have been grounds to oppose the disambiguation renaming. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:49, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Even in the case of the First Chechen War, as late as 2014 both Al Jazeera and The Guardian used a lowercase "f" and lowercase "w" in their stories marking the 20th anniversary of the conflict. On the other hand, The Atlantic in 2013 and The New York Times in 2019 used "F" and "W". Restricting the search to books.google.com shows some using one form, some using the other. It's probably just an arbitrary style manual choice of each publication, without any broader implications. So even in the long term, these questions will not be settled to everyone's satisfaction. Except in the very long term, there tends to be an inevitable drift towards universal all-caps usage, as in the First Balkan War. In any case, Wikipedia used all caps for First Chechen War and Second Chechen War right from the earliest versions of those articles circa 2002 and 2003. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:49, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I've always said it wasn't a proper name. That was mentioned in the RM. As for other wars, they have their own names. Determining English usage for the war in question requires sources on that war. CMD (talk) 14:36, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, OK, it was the other user, Brandmeister, who made the "proper name" argument in the Requested Move discussion. I mentioned First Chechen War as illustrative of what we might expect for this war: an old (pre-Wikipedia) war needing a new name or description due to a newer war, and even twenty years later there wasn't agreement on whether it's a proper name or a just a descriptive naming. In any case, German state news Deutsche Welle has used the all-capitalized version: First Nagorno-Karabakh War. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 15:31, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The trouble with news articles post-move is that they likely as not may be taking cues from Wikipedia. CMD (talk) 15:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Unlikely, since Al Jazeera and The Guardian did not take twelve years of cues from Wikipedia regarding First Chechen War. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:35, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It turns out, the state Armenian news agency Armenpress was using the all-capitalized version [back in October]. I don't know if that influenced anyone. Probably different people are arriving at one naming convention or the other independently but for much the same reasons. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

PS, the case-insensitive term "first nagorno-karabakh war" is used in sources from both Armenian .am and Azerbaijan .az domains. Some usages even predate the recent war, because some consider the 2016 conflict to have been a war. So the terminology at least, independently of capitalization issues, does seem to be acceptable on both sides. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 16:54, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The Chechen War is a separate war with a different name. What matters is the war in question, and what reliable sources call it. In this, the capitalisation is quite an important distinction, hence why the 2020 article moved to use a lower-case w. CMD (talk) 18:03, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You're repeating yourself, but I was countering your "taking cues from Wikipedia" assertion. Why would that occur after only two days in one case, but not occur after twelve years in a very similar case? -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 18:40, 21 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because news is written by multiple people with differing styles and experience in multiple outlets with differing editorial practices and processes? CMD (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is also written by multiple people with differing styles. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

If we look to reliable sources for guidance on this specific style issue, we see that consensus sometimes isn't reached even after twenty years. You insist that looking at First Chechen War tells us nothing about how to handle First Nagorno-Karabakh War, but in fact, reasoning on the basis of precedents and closely analogous situations is a perfectly standard approach in debates and discussions and even in legal cases. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 13:19, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has policies that are different to other formats, such as news sources, due to Wikipedia being a tertiary source. Editor styles fit within that and our style guide. Article naming isn't a legal issue, and debates here involve different considerations to those in other forums. For example, in Wikipedia's case, it's guided by core considerations such as WP:OR, and WP:SYNTH. This is precisely the opposite of what you'd expect from a good legal debate. CMD (talk) 15:02, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"Original research" applies to "facts, allegations, and ideas" and reaching conclusions, per WP:OR. For instance, coming up with your own theories about how the war started, or inside information about secret arms deals, or whatever. Similarly, WP:SYNTH is about combining multiple sources and then using your own analysis to derive new implications and conclusions. None of this remotely applies to quibbling over capitalization in a widely used term, as a stylistic issue. You are invoking inapplicable grounds as the basis for your argument. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:OR article has the subsection WP:CALC, which explains that it's not original research to add two plus two to get four, or to combine a birth date and a death date to figure out a person's age at death. If they actually found it necessary to state this explicitly, I can only imagine that someone somewhere at some time tried advancing those very claims in order to try to win a debate. If something is a real stretch, it's probably not a sound argument. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

On the one hand, you've misinterpreted Wikipedia's guides and policies with your own unfounded definition of what constitutes "original research". And on the other hand, when the practical application of those guides and policies is concretely illustrated by the precedent of a very closely analogous case (First Chechen War), on the basis that any policy should be applied in a consistent and uniform and predictable way, you argue instead that extremely similar situations should be handled quite divergently. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 17:27, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Names are sourceable facts, and capitalisation is part of the name. This is the reason that the 2020 war page was moved to a lower-case w, so check there if you want to see the claims made and followed through with. CMD (talk) 18:26, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I took a look at the Requested Move discussion for the 2020 war. It's a bit odd to hold that up as an example. Although the discussion got sidetracked over other issues and (inevitably) capitalization, the original and main point was how to characterize it: "conflict" or "war". Users who wanted to keep calling it a "conflict" cited analysis that perennial reliable sources were mostly still calling it that. Maybe only one or two "war" supporters even offered one-line cursory counterclaims; they mostly reacted along the lines of: "It is absurd to insist that this is not a war." The latter consensus carried the day. By your standards, they were right only retroactively and the change should not have proceeded at the time. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 02:08, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure how you're interpreting my standards, but to be clear, they're to not to create a proper name where sources have not. Proper nouns are distinct from descriptive titles. This is in line with the closing statement which explicitly states such a "proposed title is unacceptable original research by synthesis". CMD (talk) 02:20, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Once again, it was quite a stretch to apply WP:SYNTH there. Apparently that's not uncommon, because someone found it necessary to create a long WP:SYNTHNOT ("What SYNTH is not") article. "Virtually anything can be shoehorned into a broad reading of SYNTH, but the vast majority of it shouldn't be." -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 07:24, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, in the Requested Move discussion for Nagorno-Karabakh War, you never actually made any "lowercase w" descriptive title argument (of course the existing title already had a capital W anyway), so that aspect of the discussion for the 2020 war isn't really applicable. Instead you argued that disambiguation isn't necessary and that the new war wasn't of comparable significance to the old war, which met with skepticism to say the least. That last point was also relevant in the discussion for the 2020 war, in fact the mere fact of re-characterizing it as "war" instead of mere "conflict" was in itself a pretty strong indicator of the consensus view of its significance. -- P.T. Aufrette (talk) 07:24, 23 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]