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Talk:Paul Anderson (Minnesota state senator)

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Requested move 21 October 2023

[edit]
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: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) estar8806 (talk) ★ 17:55, 28 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

– These titles exhibit WP:OVERPRECISION. They contain unnecessary extra disambiguation by including an identification of the specific state in which each person held their identified role. See the somewhat-related recent discussions at Talk:Joseph Brennan (senator)#Requested move 8 August 2023 and Talk:David Smith (Canadian senator)#Requested move 30 August 2023. Please double-check in case I have not noticed some ambiguity. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 11:38, 21 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  • I agree with the "double-check" caution. These must be checked not only against existing articles, but against similarly-named politicians lacking an article. BD2412 T 00:00, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strongly oppose. Even without searching—probably a colossal waste of time, given the difficulty of locating online sources for the complete legislative rosters for fifty states (ignoring states in other countries) since 1776—I can practically guarantee that there have been multiple state senators with virtually all of these names, as well as numerous other people. Reducing the disambiguation to "state senator" introduces unnecessary ambiguity—this isn't West Virginia Wikipedia or New York Wikipedia, it's English (language) Wikipedia, and its coverage is global. "State senator" is utterly useless as a disambiguator when it doesn't tell you what state it refers to—there are forty-nine state senates—and without the word "state" the disambiguation would suggest U.S. senators and representatives. It'd be like using "state capital" or "county" (or "U.S. county") as disambiguators. We wouldn't even consider titles like "Springfield (state capital)" or "Cabell (U.S. county)". Yes, we have specific naming conventions for these situations, but the potential for titles like this is part of the reason why.
Unlike say, state parks, which often have unique names, there are dozens of entries on Wikipedia for most of these names, and that likely just scratches the surface of potentially notable local political figures. There's just one "Hawk's Nest State Park", but there are more than eighty people named "William Campbell" on the disambiguation page (at least five of whom will have had the middle initial 'W', but I would say that in most cases, middle initials aren't good disambiguators for Wikipedia articles about people with common names), including a large selection of politicians. This isn't a case of unnecessary disambiguation, because readers can't be expected to know whether there have been multiple notable state senators with particular names in different states; assuming that readers will intuit that "state senator" must mean the state they're looking for is absurd. P Aculeius (talk) 14:31, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We do have Joseph F. Timilty (state senator), Robert Lansing (state senator), Perry B. Duryea (state senator), Joseph Mullin (state senator), Charles Kellogg (state senator), John Ryder (state senator), Edward F. Harrington (state representative), John Lyle (state representative), William R. Callahan (state representative), William Dixon (state representative), Thomas Reynolds (state representative), David Jennings (state representative), John Schmidt (state representative), Samuel Black (state representative), Roger Williams (state representative), John Ryder (state representative), and also the two previous RMs referred to above. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 22:20, 23 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I would have opposed the moves in the referenced discussions if I had participated in them. For that reason, plus the rationale for my "oppose" in this discussion, I believe the precedence set by those discussions is not necessarily a "automatic support" for this discussion's moves. In fact, I would go to an extent to say the titles with "(state senator/representative)" may not be precise enough. Steel1943 (talk) 01:21, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
They should all be moved. The discussions cited led to non-standard outcomes, which I would certainly have opposed had I not been on holiday at the time. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:04, 24 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I wasn't aware of any of those moves, having come across this discussion only because it showed up on WikiProject West Virginia's article alerts. But it doesn't change my opinion; most of those are also common names, and "state" without the name of the state is useless as a disambiguator for people. They would be better moved to titles that identify the state. Consistency is overrated; just because we made a poor decision in the past doesn't mean we have to do it again. P Aculeius (talk) 04:32, 27 October 2023 (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.
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