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Archive 1Archive 2

Requested move 19 October 2021

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: moved to Railway track. Rough consensus to move to the alternative Railway track. (closed by non-admin page mover) Vpab15 (talk) 16:51, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Track (rail transport) → Railroad track OR Railway track – per clear primary usage and to avoid unnecessary disambig. The redirect history has some IP vandalism so can't be moved by me.  See below RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 13:29, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:20, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • This is clearly not an uncontroversial move, given that "railroad" is terminology that isn't used in the UK and other places. I would oppose this move and suggest the current title is best.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    "Railroad" indeed isn't used in British English, the only way I knew of that term was from reading about American Monopoly. Crouch, Swale (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Same! Dr. Vogel (talk) 16:17, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    The discussion on the page was uncontroversial that the current title is dubious. "Railway track" can also work, if that is what bothers you. Both terms are unambiguous, though, and recognisable enough that they're certainly better ways to do this than the current title. See also [1]. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 16:37, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Yes per WP:ATDAB that could also work. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • @RandomCanadian, Amakuru, and DrVogel: Discuss because of the above objections as well as the 2019 RM which proposed using the British "Railway track" that I noted. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose move as requested - railways were invented in the United Kingdom, therefore the British English term railway track should be the destination of the move. Mjroots (talk) 17:24, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    I don't understand your rationale here. Just because something was invented first in the U.K. doesn't automatically mean British English must be used. The term used for the name should reflect the most common name, which very well might be "Railway track", but I disagree with your rationale here. For the record, the world's first public railroad/railway was created under the name Lake Lock Rail Road in 1796. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 17:58, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose this as well as Railway track. While we do prefer natural disambiguation when there are near equal choices such as English language over English (language) and it does say sometimes this requires a change of the variety of English used such as elevator over lift where Chinese whispers was preferred over Telephone (game) since both suggestions would probably otherwise be suitable and unlike elevator or Chinese whispers of COMMUNALITY or COMMONNAME there's no clear evidence of favouring one over the other we should probably leave as is. Crouch, Swale (talk) 17:33, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Just to be clear: support "railway track", support "railroad track", oppose current title. Either of the national English variants is acceptable per the WP:CRITERIA (as being all of precise, unambiguous, natural and recognisable), and if one is chosen over the other that would be simply as a technical limitation due to the fact the article needs to be at one title - both should of course be mentioned/bolded in the lead, .... The current title is unnecessary disambiguation, and not otherwise appropriate as nobody refers to the subject as merely "tracks", unless it is already clear from the context what kind of tracks one is talking about. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 17:54, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support railway track or railroad track. Either will work, though I suspect more editors will prefer the British term. The current name is confusing and not immediately clear. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:00, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    Maybe if it has strong ties to the British but I doubt it does enough to prefer the British term. The current name and qualifier seem clear enough that it refers to a railroad/railway track though I agree its not ideal. Crouch, Swale (talk) 21:10, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Comment What nobody seems to have mentioned - and RandomCanadian should definitely have checked before doing this - is that the present article title was arrived at following Talk:Track (rail transport)#Requested move, and re-ratified at Talk:Track (rail transport)#Requested move 24 August 2019. So to claim that the move is "uncontroversial" is way out of order. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:30, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    I did not notice those discussions (large unarchived talk page?), and the more recent discussion (the one that prompted this) was clearly heading in one direction. The latest requested move only had limited participation, so shouldn't be taken too much into account, even if one was ignoring that WP:Consensus can change; both of the discussions would be rather poor by today standards, and all of the objections based on ENGVAR seem to be obvious misinterpretations now that I look at it: "If a variant spelling appears in a title, make a redirect page to accommodate the others" (as "Terms that differ between varieties of English, or that have divergent meanings, may be glossed to prevent confusion") in fact explicitly seems to have no problem with the article being at one variant, provided it still meets the article title criteria=. The example about "Use universally accepted terms" is clearly to avoid readers being WP:SURPRISEDD with terms which may be obscure or confusing/hard to understand (like "spectacles", which beyond the given British English meaning could also just be the plural of "spectacle" [as in the example from Merriam-Webster: "the multimedia spectacles that have become established parts of the opening and closing ceremonies for the Olympic Games' [2]]; or "crore", which is unlikely to be understood outside of the Indian subcontinent). None of these apply to "railroad tracks" or "railway tracks", which are clearly similar enough and include the obvious "rail" in any case. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 21:06, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose change. The current title is neutral, globally understood, not excessively long and arrived at by consensus. Yes, consensus can change, but generally not when the status quo is not broken and I'm just not seeing any problems with the current title that make picking one or other national variation (whichever is chosen) an improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 21:57, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Weak oppose due to railway track vs railroad track --Spekkios (talk) 23:01, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
    (edit conflict) (reply to both) The proposed title is also neutral (I don't see what is non-neutral about picking one variant or the other: see also my comment just above where I dispell any notion about ENGVAR); it is globally understandable (unless you're not educated at all, you're certainly going to understand either of "railway" or "railroad"; and this also goes with the ENGVAR argument above); and it is not needlessly verbose either. The rest of the argument rests on the foundation that the existing consensus is "not broken" and that the proposed change is "not an improvement". As has been said, parenthetical disambiguation should only be used if necessary: given that "track" (in isolation) is not commonly used to refer to this out of context, this does not seem to be the case that parenthetical disambiguation is necessary, and that the fuller variants are both a more natural and recognisable form (something that readers are actually likely to search for), so should be privileged. The only "advantage" the current title has is that it isn't in one particular variant of English: this seems to be at best a risible issue, given that other railway terms can also be found at titles like Level crossing (British); Railroad switch (American); Railway signal (British) ; ..., and that the alternative can obviously exist as a redirect. Obviously, if people are afraid there will be no consensus on which one, we can just have a proper vote (since in this case, the only difference would really be personal opinion and not policy arguments) and pick whichever option has the most. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Oppose or move to Railway track, the common term worldwide. -- Necrothesp (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support move to either "railroad track" or "railway track". These titles would improve conciseness and recognizability, and markedly improve naturalness. ModernDayTrilobite (talk) 14:21, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support move to either. Squabble over English/American usage not really determinative - either will understand the other. Just pick one and go with it. Walrasiad (talk) 13:01, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support move to either. More natural disambiguation. JIP | Talk 10:52, 22 October 2021 (UTC)
  • Support move to "railway track." The current title is not great and an example of a poor compromise. While railroad may be the more common term in the US, most people would still be familiar enough with the term railway that it could be used in this instance. -- Calidum 15:24, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

National variety (if consensus for a move)

If this is moved, and since the article can only be at one title, a choice (if nothing else, based on personal whim) must be made: which one should it be? Railroad track or Railway track? RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 23:25, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Continued discussion

  • Support move (and agree with RandomCanadian) but stop the stupid non-sensical arguments on English usage: Move the dam thing to railway as likely the majority of the world identify with this. The almost hysterically funny advocates for using American English terminology offer sometimes laughably insane and I would also offer biased opinions that result in a mentally disturbing title of crap. Arguments that oppose the move because of national variations of English go against the rationale that we are to avoid unnecessary names or parenthetical disambiguation. The original author is from the UK so (British English) should be a major consideration. I did not make that up but the WP:ENGVAR states: English Wikipedia prefers no national variety of English. This is in line with WP:TITLEVAR that states: Very occasionally, a less common but non-nation-specific term is selected to avoid having to choose between national varieties:. There is nothing "less common" about settling on the current title. If the author was from a country aligned with American English I would support using "Railroad" track. I am having trouble understanding the neutrality bullshit over an English usage impasse. Look at one reply: "Weak oppose due to railway track vs railroad track" (I hope discounted), and is exactly the problem from an international encyclopedia point of view. I am from the deep south of the United States, largely self-taught with no academic credentials, and can see the capitulation of arriving at a non-name is preposterous. The overwhelmingly vast majority of the entire world (there are only a handful of countries without a "railway") understands either of the two, "Railroad track" or "Railway track", and the latter likely has more of a world population use, so there is an absolute zero logical rationale for the non-natural parenthetical disambiguation because of biased arguments to keep it where it does not belong. At @RandomCanadian: Maybe adding "railway" to the opening statement would prevent the mind-blowing arguments involving various English variations. -- Otr500 (talk) 23:51, 20 October 2021 (UTC)
    • A minor point, but there are only a handful of countries without a "railway" is a dubious claim (assuming you are talking infrastructure rather than terminology) - List of countries by rail transport network size#Countries currently without a rail network lists 50 countries without an active rail network, 28 if you exclude those with former networks and/or lines under construction. The number of countries depends on how you define country and what stance you take on various geopolitical disputes (e.g. how many Chinas are there, how many countries are there in the area between Egypt and Lebanon) but it's around 200 meaning that about ¼ of countries have no rail network and about ⅐ have no disused or under construction network. If you include those countries that have "railroads" but not "railways" then the number only increases, but I've not managed to quickly find a source that tells me by how many. Thryduulf (talk) 01:47, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
    • Comment: Given that rail track is comprehensible in both languages variants, and there will be redirects either way, why not avoid both? Qwirkle (talk) 02:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
      @Qwirkle: See my comment dated 23:23, 19 October 2021. "Rail track" is not a particularly common expression in this context when compared to either of the other two, or at least it is not one that intuitively comes to mind (so it would fail WP:NATURAL). RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:42, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
      I’d agree it would be a second or third choice in layman’s languages in many countries, and hence “less natural”. Whether that’s a usefull tradeoff for “less divisive” is the question.

      Some goodly number of folk would reach this article from redirects and searches, is there some toolforge widget that puts numbers to that? Qwirkle (talk) 02:55, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

      @Qwirkle: The default pageviews.toolforge (with "Include redirects" selected) shows indeed significant views from redirects... I think there's also something more advanced, but I can't remember off the top of my head what it is. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:05, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
      @Qwirkle and RandomCanadian: Redirect Views shows that 121,173 of the 149,769 hits to this article this year have come direct to this title. The redirects that would be plausible as titles for the whole article with more than 1000 hits in the same period are:
      • Rail tracks (7,137)
      • Permanent way (2,163)
      • Rail track (1,922)
      • Railway track (1,539)
      • Rail (rail transport) (1,199)
      • Railroad track (1,178)
      • Railroad tracks (1,072)
      Curiously, while the plural "railroad tracks" has only about 100 fewer views the singular, the plural "railway tracks" has about 1,200 fewer hits (341 vs 1539). Thryduulf (talk) 15:05, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
      @Thryduulf: There's also the fact this is linked to in the navbox templates at the bottom (Template:Rail tracks and Template:Railway track layouts). It's also not too indicative when googling (arguably, on of the most common ways one gets to Wikipedia) either of "railway track" or "railroad track" brings up this page directly as the first result... RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 15:15, 21 October 2021 (UTC)
      To add some concrete numbers to my abstract hypothesis: google trends and ngram both have the current title as basically non-existent (ngram doesn't even register the current variant). The results as to which variant is more popular are not otherwise too relevant, as the two disagree (although I note the ngram corpus appears to be heavily biased on American sources: the curves for British English look quite different); and as there is already a consensus here for which variant to prefer. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 02:02, 23 October 2021 (UTC)
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.

Vital article

The previous title of this article was considered a vital article (level 4, I believe), but the move to the new title removed the vital status. I'm not familiar with how vital articles are classified, how do we restore the vital article ranking to this article? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:32, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Trainsandotherthings: This is still listed at Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/4/Technology#Rail_transport_(14_articles). The bot seems to have messed up somehow, I've reverted it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 03:38, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
Glad it was an easy fix, thanks for taking care of it. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:40, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
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