Talk:Hatch Act (disambiguation)

Requested move 31 October 2016

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: For a length of time, the proper procedure for listing was not followed. Despite this, the discussion still did not reach a reasonable consensus for the move after 2 weeks (non-admin closure) — Andy W. (talk) 20:21, 13 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hatch Act → Hatch Act (disambiguation)
Hatch Act of 1939 → Hatch Act

– While there are two acts known as the Hatch Act, it's very clear that the 1939 act is much more noteworthy and much more likely to be referred to simply as "the Hatch Act". Here are a couple of the first sources that come up when you google "hatch act" that all talk about the 1939 act without bothering to specify "of 1939": [1] [2] [3]. The 1939 act has come up in the news very recently, and with no exception (that I could find anyway), all news outlets seem to be calling it simply "the Hatch Act" (rather than "the Hatch Act of 1939"); examples: CNN, New York Times, The Hill, New York Daily News, Slate. Per WP:COMMONNAME, articles should be titled with their commonly recognized name rather than their formal/"correct" name. Therefore, I'm proposing that the 1939 act be moved to "Hatch Act", that the current disambiguation page at "Hatch Act" be moved to "Hatch Act (disambiguation)", and that "Hatch Act of 1939" be made to redirect to "Hatch Act". Of course, this move will also necessitate adding a {{for}} template at the top of the 1939 act article, so that the 1887 act can also be found. IagoQnsi (talk) 14:41, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Malformed template ... but Oppose, these are both notable, and quite different. Mixing them up could be very unhelpful to readers. In ictu oculi (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]
- @In ictu oculi: I do not disagree that they are both notable (otherwise this would be a deletion discussion), but the 1939 act is much more highly discussed and also much more likely to be referred to as simply "the Hatch Act" (without the "of 1939" bit). Look at the pageview statistics for these two pages over the last 180 days (well, actually, the last 180 days as of a week ago, to exclude the Comey story bump). Even prior to today's big news story, the 1939 act receives far more views than the 1887 act, by one or two magnitudes of order (disable the "Logarithmic scale" checkbox on the pageviews site so you can see the full magnitude of the difference).

Here's a good comparison. If you google "hatch act employees", you'll find that none of the results (except Wikipedia) include the "of 1939" clause. But if you google "hatch act agriculture", you'll find that every single result includes the "of 1887" clause (except for one result which is actually about the 1939 act). In common parlance, it's clear that the 1939 act is simply "the Hatch Act" and the 1887 act is "the Hatch Act of 1887", and this should therefore be reflected by Wikipedia's article titles per WP:COMMONNAME. -IagoQnsi (talk) 18:03, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

- And to be clear, I'm not proposing we completely hide the 1887 act. We'll certainly need a notice at the top of the 1939 page like this:

I just think that sending someone who types in "Hatch Act" to a disambiguation page is confusing, because most other websites/sources don't call it "Hatch Act of 1939", and odds are the user won't be sure which link is correct. -IagoQnsi (talk) 18:20, 31 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The issue of the article title Hatch Act of 1939 vs Hatch Act (1939) is independent/tangential from that of selecting a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Changing titles for both still leaves the issue that they need disambiguating. Widefox; talk 09:50, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support moving Hatch Act of 1939 to the bare title Hatch Act. I find the formatting of the other two proposed moves to be confused, so I won't comment on them specifically except to say that there should be a hatnote from this article directly to the 1887 act. 64.105.98.115 (talk) 02:36, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Malformed / Oppose as drafted . Misunderstanding of how WP:D works. We can and should keep both titles as is. Red herring of changing the article title, we can just create a redirect for the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC (please see that). The case for creating a primary topic is waiting to be persuasively made, so until then keep the current layout. Widefox; talk 09:40, 1 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose too confusing. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 04:13, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. I have removed the malformed portion of this request; that should make it less confusing. – wbm1058 (talk) 23:20, 4 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The 1939 act is far and away the more prominent, and the one most readers are looking for when searching for "Hatch Act". It receives 98.4% of the page views and is far more common in Google Books searches.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose: Both Acts are of equal import and that import is very different based on the perspective of the reader. Those seeking info on “political” issues will obviously gravitate to the 1939 act, but those with an "agricultural" interest to the 1887 act. Given the recent political turmoil, one would be likely to agree that the 1939 act was more relevant to the times than the 1887 act, but that does not diminish the relevance and import of the 1887 act. I am very much in favor of NOT deciding for readers what they should be reading. The current DAB is just fine and serves readers well. I also rail against the type of rationale used by respected editors like @Cuchullain: who divine and the one most readers are looking for when searching for "Hatch Act". from page view statistics. Those statistics only tell you where they landed, not what they were searching for. It is arrogant to think we can divine what any given reader is searching for.--Mike Cline (talk) 12:29, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's true, but only to a point. In this case, the subject is usually called "Hatch Act", not "Hatch Act of 1939". It is entirely reasonable to think that many of the 98%+ of voters looking for the article know the topic as such.--Cúchullain ^t/c 18:28, 8 November 2016 (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.

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Hatch Act of 1939 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 21:01, 24 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]