Talk:House of Commons (disambiguation)

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Requested move 25 October 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: No move. Consensus is that the WP:CONCEPTDAB House of Commons should remain at the base name. Cúchullain ^t/c 15:40, 17 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

House of Commons (disambiguation) → House of Commons – Discussion needed following recent AFD. See talk page. Tevildo (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2015 (UTC)--Relisted. Cúchullain ^t/c 16:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.

Support as nominator. Tevildo (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment The proposal is an improvement on the current situation. But ideally, "House of Commons" should be a full length article on the British institution beginning in medieval times. Whether you look at encyclopedias, dictionaries, or search engine results, the dominant meaning of "House of Commons" is clearly the English/British institution.[1][2] Furthermore, the English/British/UKish split is not the way the body's history is usually divided up. Hymn and her (talk) 08:44, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose WP:CONCEPTDAB a base article should exist. The AfD ended as no consensus so is not relevant. This article should be about the lower house of parliament in a Westminsterian style democracy, and not about specific examples per se. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:55, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- Comment There might be a case for such an article, but not at this title - the names of the lower houses in the various Westminster systems are fairly evenly split between "House of Representatives", "House of Assembly", and "National Assembly", with "House of Commons" only used in the UK and Canada. Perhaps an expanded section at Lower house? Tevildo (talk) 09:09, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  - "Lower house" is not specifically about the Wesminster system's lower house, so a different article should exist, such as this article. "House of Representatives" is completely usable because of the prominent federal and state-level houses in the United States which is not Wesminsterian at all. As the original house of the system is called "House of Commons", that is a reasonable name to use for the general article about the lower house as found in that system. Lower house (Westminster system) would also work, in which case, we move this article to Westminster system lower house or such. But "House of Commons" if so moved should remain a redirect to the Westminster system lower house article. (which can hatnote the disambiguation page; which does not move anywhere) -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 04:02, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    - Why do we need an article on the lower house in a Westminster parliament? Is there too much that is common to them and distinct from lower houses in other systems than can be neatly contained in the article on the Westminster system? Srnec (talk) 13:53, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose changed from ~~Comment towards Slight oppose~~ I notice that all other common names for lower houses have pages in their own right, instead of disambiguation : National Assembly, Chamber of Deputies, House of Representatives but also Diet (assembly), Thing (assembly), House of Assembly, Legislative council, Legislative assembly, Congress, House of Chiefs, Majlis, Shura, Majlis-ash-Shura, Divan, Soviet (council), Rada, The Estates and of course Senate. Therefore the current system of having a page for the term House of Commons beyond the various historical assemblies seems very legitimate to me. Place Clichy (talk) 07:51, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Nobody can agree on what the destination page is supposed to be. We already have Westminster system, bicameralism and lower house besides the two articles on the only existing houses of commons. Enough! Srnec (talk) 22:49, 29 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And how is that different from the other examples I gave above ? There is currently only one national legislative body called Diet (Japan) and only three have Thing as part of there name (Iceland, Denmark, Norway) and yet we still have articles (not dab pages) for Diet (assembly) and Thing (assembly) because these are study-worth concepts beyond the individual bodies that bear or have born this name (2 current and 7 past in the case of House of Commons, or even 5 past if you consider England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom to be one same body). Saying otherwise is British ethnocentrism : it may be obvious to the British reader what is a House of Commons and what are the reasons for a legislature to be called House of Commons instead of, say, House or Representatives or National Assembly, or it may be obvious to this reader that they all relate to the English/British body, but to other readers a short article referring to the lower house in the Westminster system and a short historical perspective is useful. Place Clichy (talk) 10:17, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is it correct to say that Australia has a house of commons, it just doesn't call it that? What makes the Japanese parliament a diet, but not the American congress? There is no distinct "house of commons" concept. There is no distinct "diet" concept. These are just words with general meanings, often used in arbitrary ways or for historical reasons. The origins of terms like "senate", "congress", "diet" and "chamber of deputies" are interesting. But these terms do not describe distinct concepts outside of specific historical instances. You cannot go deeper than dictionary definitions. The concept people seem to be interested in here is "lower house in a Westminster parliament". But given the articles we already have, a separate article on that topic needs an argument. Srnec (talk) 13:53, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I don't see the fuss, this seems a perfectly acceptable concept dab to me. What benefit will there be from moving the 'straight' dab page here? The reader will have the same list of links, but have a loss of context that this page currently provides. Jenks24 (talk) 13:33, 6 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose for the same reason as Jenks24. Even if not ideal, the current arrangement has some practical usefulness, in at least providing a little content that gives a snapshot and, if nothing else, at least helps sort what the person is looking for before digging in deep into any of them. Not exactly sure what is being gained the other way. All it will do is ensure that every time some editor thoughtlessly links to "House of Commons" in an article, there will be an annoying "disambiguation needed" note automatically inserted by bot later. Walrasiad (talk) 07:20, 7 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Any additional comments:

The recent discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/House of Commons did not lead to consensus for the page to be deleted, but I believe that there was a general consensus for some action to be taken. I'd therefore like to repeat the proposal from the AFD discussion:

House of Commons should be a simple disambiguation page (currently at House of Commons (disambiguation)).
House of Commons (disambiguation) should redirect to House of Commons.
Any substantive content currently in House of Commons should be moved to the appropriate article (House of Commons of the United Kingdom or House of Commons of Canada).

Tevildo (talk) 22:20, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I don't understand the reasoning behind the second request. I see the utility of having an article containing what House of Commons currently has, and just moving it to two separate articles about the Canadian and the UK Houses seems to detract from their common origins, vis-a-vis the system in and of itself, and not merely having 2 articles describing the two country's Houses. I interpret this as a loss in encyclopaedic quality. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 03:21, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. As I read that AFD discussion, the appropriate action here should either be a merge and/or split proposal discussion, not a requested move discussion. There was no consensus to actually delete the page history of House of Commons, which that would essentially do if an actual page rename by an admin was carried out. Zzyzx11 (talk) 05:08, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree that WP:RM isn't the ideal vehicle for doing this (and AFD wasn't the ideal vehicle, either), but I hope that this discussion will lead to a definite resolution to the situation (even if we do decide to maintain the status quo). Tevildo (talk) 08:58, 26 October 2015 (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.