Talk:Captain Spaulding

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Fictional characters

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Requested move 3 November 2017

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: moved. Jenks24 (talk) 11:50, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

– Groucho's Captain Spaulding is clearly the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. The other two characters, one of whom is spelled "Spalding", are obvious homages to the original. —Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 07:25, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Ambivalent. Even if the name of the House of 1000 Corpses is derived, that character is independently notable on the same ground as a culturally significant fictional character. The entry for this character in List of Rob Zombie characters is about as substantive as the freestanding article on the Animal Crackers character. bd2412 T 14:07, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support, Hello, the qualifier must be going, it cannot stay, I came to say it must be going. I'm glad I came to this RM, but just the same I must be going. Randy Kryn (talk) 21:25, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Netoholic @ 10:50, 4 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Requested move 17 October 2019

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 move. Cúchullain ^t/c 20:44, 24 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Captain Spaulding → Captain Spaulding (Animal Crackers) –
The ol' reversal. Last month, I moved the page to "Captain Spaulding (Animal Crackers), and I noticed that this change was recently undone ~~(on a side note, I'd like to point out that this reversion probably should not have been listed as "uncontroversial", per WP:RM#CM)~~. I have to disagree with the consensus reached by the November discussion.

I disagree with Roman Spinner's claim that the Groucho character is "clearly" the primary topic, and I invite readers of this discussion to review WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Though Groucho's Spaulding came first, and was the inspiration for the Rob Zombie character's name, the latter character is "highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term". In fact, when I searched for "Captain Spaulding" on Google, Groucho's Spaulding didn't show up until the fifth page of results (not including the Wikipedia article in question). Results for the Zombie character are also significantly more prevalent when searching for "Captain Spaulding" on Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube. Again, Groucho's Spaulding came first, and Zombie's Spaulding owes his name to him, but Zombie's Spaulding nonetheless has much more coverage and popularity than Groucho's. –Matthew - (talk) 03:58, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Homage is itself an incredibly strong indication of the original's long-term significance. I don't see evidence that one or the other is, in the long-term, going to be "more likely to be searched". -- Netoholic @ 07:21, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Groucho's iconic character has lasted 90 years, while Rob Zombies's homage dates from the 2000s. The homage character may be receiving more google hits per WP:RECENT, but the long-term historical significance is clearly on the side of Groucho. Incidentally, the reversal was not on the basis of WP:RM#Uncontroversial technical requests, but WP:RM#Requests to revert undiscussed moves. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 14:17, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: @Roman Spinner: My apologies for the misunderstanding. I've stricken through that bit about the basis of the reversal. I would like to point out that Zombie's Spaulding is a homage to Groucho's in name only. I also request that you or someone else provide some evidence to support the claim that Groucho's Spaulding has greater significance than Zombie's, beyond the fact that Groucho's Spaulding is older and was homaged by the name of Zombie's Spaulding. The article for Groucho's Spaulding contains only three citations at the time that I'm typing this—one is an AMC analysis of Animal Crackers (which focuses on the film as a whole rather than being primarily focused on the Spaulding character), and another is an article published by Moviepilot about Rob Zombie's films. If Groucho's Spaulding has greater significance than Zombie's, then there should at least be a few sources which discuss Groucho's Spaulding in a non-trivial way. –Matthew - (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Matthew: No need to apologize — as soon as a request at WP:RM#TR is fulfilled, it is deleted and users wishing to review such past requests have to delve into history. As for this particular matter, the article delineating Groucho's Captain Spaulding was created 17:04, 24 February 2004, while you created the entry for Rob Zombie's Captain Spaulding 15½ years later, 19:24, 24 September 2019‎‎.

At the time of Talk:Captain Spaulding#Requested move 3 November 2017, it was only a relatively brief section at List of Firefly (film series) characters#Captain Spaulding. Since only four users participated in that November 2017 discussion, WP:Consensus may change. Also, if one googles Groucho Captain Spaulding, additional possibilities for inline cites begin to appear. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 19:22, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Pageviews for the period 25 Sep to 13 Oct (when the Zombie character was at the plain name and the Marx character had the "Animal Crackers" qualifier) show the Zombie character getting 95% of the hits, and Google confirms its status as WP:primary topic. - Station1 (talk) 20:11, 17 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

That's a misleadingly specific short time span demonstrating a spike that exists only due to the release of the recent movie. A fair analysis would look at the long-term page views and note that the two topics are much closer to each other than you're implying. -- Netoholic @ 09:59, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

It is generally better to look at longer time spans when they are available, but in this case the Zombie article was not created until 24 Sep, so looking at a chart showing monthly data from 2015-present is essentially meaningless except to show that the Marx article was consistently in the low-to-mid thousands per month (with a slight downward trend) until Sep 2019, when it shot up to 23,000 because it was converted to the Zombie article on the 24th of that month. The Zombie article will very likely show a future drop from the average daily pageviews shown in my chart, but even if it's cut in half the Zombie article will still be getting 10 times the views of the Marx article. It would have to lose 90% of its views for Marx to come close, and then it would just be a NOPRIMARY situation so this proposal would still make sense. The Zombie article gets many more views than even Animal Crackers (1930 film). - Station1 (talk) 19:07, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per book sources. In ictu oculi (talk) 23:20, 19 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: @In ictu oculi: Could you please provide these book sources? The article for Zombie's Spaulding currently has more literary sources than the article for Groucho's Spaulding does, and the one book that the article for Groucho's Spaulding cites is in reference to the character's theme song having been played by Marvin Hamlisch when Marx performed at Carnegie Hall in the 1970s. –Matthew - (talk) 12:59, 22 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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.