Talk:Aenigmachanna gollum

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Requested move 20 November 2020

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 after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus to move (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 19:46, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Aenigmachanna gollum → Gollum snakehead – WP:COMMONNAME dictates that this page should be named Gollum snakehead, as the species does not go by any other common names, no other species uses this common name, and common names are preferred over scientific names for the sake of recognizability. Kodiak Blackjack (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2020 (UTC)—Relisted. 2pou (talk) 19:13, 4 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose—We don't necessarily prefer common names. Some situations where we don't sometimes include cases where the binomial is more widely known or is more precise because, for example, the common name refers to other taxa as well. It's not entirely clear that "Gollum snakehead" is more common than the binomial name; so per WP:COMMONNAME it seems like maybe we shouldn't move it? Some analysis: the binomial is used almost exclusively in scholarly literature. The phrase "Gollum snakehead" appears to almost exclusively be used in short news articles covering the discovery and description of the species, and these articles generally use the binomial as well. The species isn't one that normal people interact with, so it isn't going to have a terribly popular common name in any case; there isn't a lot of non-scientific discussion of the subject. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 17:34, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom.--Ortizesp (talk) 15:19, 9 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose WP:COMMONNAME dictates that the title should be the name that is most commonly used in reliable sources. And the scientific name of organism may be more commonly used in reliable sources than any vernacular ("common") name. Google estimates 4,070 results for "Aenigmachanna gollum" and 1,850 for ""Gollum snakehead" (and there are admittedly many pitfalls with a WP:GOOGLETEST, one of which is that less reliable sources are picked up with more reliable sources). Of the three sources currently cited in the article, two don't mention "Gollum snakehead" at all and the one that does only uses it in a photo caption, not in the main text. RECOGNIZABLITY/COMMONNAME is but one of 5 article title criteria. CONSISTENT is another; articles on most of the closest relatives of this fish, and most fish in general more consistently use scientific names for titles than vernacular names. PRECISION is another title criterion; scientific name are always at least as precise as vernacular names and often more so ("Gollum snakehead" isn't unprecise in this particular case, but "Gollum dragon snakehead" is perhaps more precise). Criterion CONCISENESS is mostly a wash; both title have two words, but "Gollum snakehead" has fewer characters. NATURALNESS; all of the incoming links made by editors are to the scientific name; what are readers searching for? Does it really matter? A redirect from the vernacular name gets them here anyway. And favoring vernacular names as title has a huge downside in precision and consistency. Plantdrew (talk) 02:41, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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.