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Requested move 22 April 2014

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The following discussion is an archived 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 consensus, hence not moved. After more than three weeks of inactivity, the core question of whether a disambiguating term is necessary remains unresolved. There does appear to be a clear consensus, supported by evidence, that the definite article is an essential part of the party's name. Further discussions on this matter might find it useful to consider that matter settled, and address only the question of whether the definite article's unique usage by the party is sufficient to disambiguate it from other parties called "National Party". Xoloz (talk) 17:31, 4 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]


The National Party → The National Party (Grenada) – this should be disambiguated, and repointed to National Party disambiguation page. --Relisted. BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:11, 8 May 2014 (UTC) 65.94.77.36 (talk) 06:18, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Survey

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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.
User:Number 57, paging also User:Labattblueboy User:Cuchullain user:victor falk User:NickCT. Is the above the case? (aren't these "the National Party is" + Australia 15,300 examples of exactly that? (Australian Politics For Dummies - Page 213 "The National Party is widely regarded as the least ideological of the main..." etc.) Also The National Party + Australia = 461,000 raw book hits The National Party + Grenada = 13,600 raw book hits Why is the Grenada party to be primary topic over one which has apparently has 35x more book hits? In ictu oculi (talk) 22:57, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
None of the results appear to use the capitalisation which is the major focus of this discussion. I'll repeat again - this subject is the primary topic for this name because (a) it is the only party with this name and (b) people are clearly not coming to this page en masse by accident when trying to locate other National parties that do not have the definite article in their title (see page view stats below). Number 57 09:41, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
There's no distinguishing difference: since as grammar requires, the Australian party capitalizes "The" at the beginning of a sentence. In any case Google Books primarily refer to Herbert Blaize's party as Grenada National Party not as "The" National Party, despite the later renaming "Blaize renamed the remnants of the NNP that remained under his control The National Party (TNP)" - this is a clear case of a generic title which per WP:CRITERIA should not be uniquely applied to one small party. In ictu oculi (talk) 01:58, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@In ictu oculi: The Grenada National Party and The National Party are two completely separate entities - the GNP existed between 1956 and 1984 (when it merged into NNP), and TNP was established in 1989 (as a split from the NNP, at least according to the entry for the party itself). Have a look at the separate entries for the GNP and TNP in the Political Parties of the Americas book. Number 57 08:12, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I saw that after I posted, but that's a detail. And it really doesn't matter which party in Grenada is called what, the main use of The National Party is in Australia. A "The" isn't sufficient to say "The means Grenada not Australia" In ictu oculi (talk) 09:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose A disambiguator is only required when there are several things with the same name. As far as I am aware, there are no other parties called "The National Party", and so a disambiguator is not required. It's also quite clear from the What links here results that this article is not being mistaken for a National Party from another country (all but one of the 20 links were for the right party). Plus creating "The National Party (Grenada)" suggests that there are other "The National Party"s. Number 57 16:05, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question - Hold on. I'm confused. Are the New National Party (Grenada) and The National Party different? NickCT (talk) 18:39, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Neutral I've pointed The National Party (Grenada) to The National Party . I am generally in support based on principal but the view stats for The National Party are so low that I'm seeing this as largely a non-issue. There here 93 views of the article in March 2013[2]. When it comes right down to it, I'm not convinced that this will really benefit or hurt users.--Labattblueboy (talk) 18:46, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support - It seems like National Party and The National Party are similiar enough that they should fall under the same disambig page. Claiming that they are "different" names seems to put a lot of emphasis on the word "The". NickCT (talk) 20:56, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to National Party (Grenada). Not primary and no need for the direct article. It's just the National Party, just like dozens of others around the world. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:14, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Unlike most others, this party actually has "The" as part of its proper title - it was also known as TNP in shorthand (see an example here, and note the capitalisation). Number 57 15:08, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • Comment: TLAs for political parties, although by no means universal, are very common, as they are preferred by competent spin-doctors. See also my vote below. Andrewa (talk) 17:34, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • I don't really understand the relevance of this point. Do you really think spin doctors existed in Grenada in the late 1980s and early 1990s? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Number 57 (talk • contribs)
          • Yes. I note our article does say that such people are hired, but I think the term is more general than that. Sorry of that was confusing. The point is, the TLA rolls off the tongue easily, so will be preferred to a two-letter acronym by those working to have the organisation publicised, for whatever reason. Andrewa (talk) 04:10, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Move to National Party (Grenada) and point The National Party to the DAB at National Party. I suspect that Wikipedia:Naming conventions (definite or indefinite article at beginning of name) needs some tweaking to cover this case, but in terms of reader experience, I think the direction is clear, so I'll plead WP:IAR for now. See also WP:official names of course. Andrewa (talk) 17:25, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • As I pointed out above, "The" is part of the party's name, and it is almost universally capitalised when referring to it (similar to The Gambia) - examples here, here, here etc. The guideline you refer to clearly states that "If the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text, then include it at the beginning of the page name." I am not sure why this should be ignored. Number 57 18:39, 30 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
      • The guideline shouldn't be ignored (that's why I linked to it), but nor should parts of it be followed blindly, ignoring the rest of it. The top of that same guideline reads It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply (my emphasis). As for The Gambia, that's one of those exceptions... officially its Republic of the Gambia (my emphasis, and note the small "t"), so it's not a case of the definite or indefinite article would be capitalized in running text, it's actually one of the strangest exceptions of all. Guidelines can't cover every possible case. Have a look at the other links I provided, particularly the essay on official names. Andrewa (talk) 04:00, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
        • I have read the official names essay, and it states that "Article titles should be recognizable to readers, unambiguous, and consistent with usage in reliable English-language sources." I think it's fairly clear that the current title meets these criteria - it is recognisable, unambigious and used by reliable sources (as evidenced in the links provided above - in fact I'm yet to find a source that does not capitalise "The" in the party's name). I'm not sure how it could used as an argument against the current title - removing "The" will make it less unamiguous as there may then be scope for confusion with Grenada National Party for instance. Number 57 06:55, 1 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. It's my opinion that "The" is needed in the title. For one, it distinguishes the party from other "National Party"s in Grenada, including Grenada National Party and New National Party. A title like "National Party (Grenada)" would be insufficient to distinguish the article. Second, the sources currently cited (eg this), as well as the ones identified by Number 57 here and others like these[4][5][6] all use a capital "The" as part of the party's name and abbreviate it to "TNP" (as opposed to just "NP"). There may be exceptions, but this well established use should be plenty for natural disambiguation. Some editors have expressed concern that "The National Party" may be confused with other "National Parties", but as no one has identified any other National Parties that would need "The", it's not really an issue. The already existing hat note will get any confused readers to the disambiguation page.--Cúchullain t/c 14:42, 5 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, exactly. My comment is in two parts; the second proposed title of National Party (Grenada) is unworkable in my mind as "The" is a necessary part of the party's name; the original proposed title is unnecessary as there aren't any other "National Party" articles that require "The"; the hat note already directs any potentially confused readers to the disambiguation page. In other words, I oppose both proposals.--Cúchullain t/c 13:57, 6 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support, in order to remove ambiguity with others similarly-named topics. I have discussed some of the issues at length in the discussion section below, but will summarise here. There are two key aspect of policy which support disambiguation as proposed: WP:CRITERIA's test of precision, and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.
  1. WP:CRITERIA says that the test of precision is whether "the title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects." The evidnece from Google Books is clear that it doesn't. In all but 63 cases out of about 10 million, "the national party" refers to something other than that Grenadian party. In other words, 99.99937% of book usages to the phrase refer to something other than this short-lived party in Grenada. That's the exact opposite of precision.
    The counter-argument offered below is that [[WP:THE|wikipedia guidelines on the definite article make no other topic eligible for this title. That is entirely true, but also irrelevant. Wikipedia is written for a general readership, rather than for the tiny minority who are well-versed in the nuances of our article-titling policies, and by common usage, "the national party" can refer to at least 20 other political parties.
  2. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC sets a test: "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term". Some editors in this discussion have been applying a test which completely counters that policy, by asking whether wp's naming rules, any other article is entitled to use the same title. I can't stress strongly enough that the test applied in policy is not whether another article has or could have the same title; it is whether this particular topic is that most commonly sought when readers search for the term.
    Supporters of the current title point to the low numbers of hits for the current page as evidence that that isn't, but actually we have no evidence whether any readers of the current page were looking for that topic. It might be 100% success or 100% fail. What we can determine is that similar searches on other search facilities do include the definite article in a significant number of cases. Google's autocomplete offers to complete a partial search term, by suggesting the most commonly-used completions. I tried it in a private browsing window (so no cookies). When I entered "the national par", autocomplete offered "the national party" as the 4th of 4 options. When I tried the test with "the democratic party", I didn't need to fill in as much of the term: once I had typed "the democ", the second option presented was "the democratic party". So it's clear that use of the definite article is common enough in Google searches to get high into the autocomplete list even for "The Democratic Party", despite the fact that the set index at the Wikipedia article Democratic Party doesn't list any party's formal title as beginning with "The". In other words, Google searchers are applying the definite article much more widely than than is done by WP:THE.
    I checked this out further on Google Adwords (which won't let me link to the searches). In April2013-March2014, there were an average of 33,100 searches per month for "Democratic Party", against 1,300 searches a month for "The Democratic Party". Since there appear to be no parties anywhere formally titled "The Democratic Party", that means that 1 out of every 25 Google searches added a superfluous definite article. Why assume that wikipedia searches are conducted any differently?
The arguments against renaming also ignore the consequences of the current ambiguous title. Typing "the national party" into wp's search box currently gives only one option, with no clue as to which country it refers to; but if we disambiguate per the nominator, auto-complete will offer readers will a clear choice between the Grenadian party and the ambiguous form (as a redirect to the dab page). How exactly are readers well-served by denying them that clarity? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:32, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not going to continue the debate below as your mind is clearly made up. However, I still contend that the typing "the national party" into the search engine is clearly not a problem because so few readers are actually coming to this article and it has the number of hits I would expect for a topic of this notability level (or slightly fewer). As for the people who do end up here incorrectly, the hatnote is an extremely obvious redirect. Number 57 22:20, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see nothing in policy to indicate that lack of usage makes an ambiguous title unambiguous. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:45, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I see nothing in policy to indicate that disambiguation is needed when there is only one subject with a specific title. Why is a hatnote insufficient? Number 57 09:41, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Then please re-read the policy. The test is not whether any other topic has that specific title; the test is whether the title identifies the topic unambiguously. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:51, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I know full well what the policy is, so please stop asking me to read it again. I've pointed out repeatedly why I believe the current title is entirely appropriate for the subject. What I haven't heard yet is why a hatnote is insufficient redirection for what is at most a tiny handful of readers who come to this article mistakenly, and why a subject with a unique title needs to be moved to accommodate these theoretical people. Number 57 15:00, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I will take your word that you have read it, but your replies don't give much indication of that :(
You are still confusing topics and titles. Per the evidence I have posted above, "The National Party" is a topic which in common usage refers overwhlemingly to parties other than the Grenadian one, so according to policy it gets disambiguated.
Where is the policy that we can ignore all the other policy just because a page gets few hits? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:18, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I am not confusing anything - I merely have a different interpretation to you, and I would appreciate it if you concentrated on the topic rather than casting aspersions on my ability to read or comprehend things. I think it's fairly clear to most readers that there is a difference between "the National Party" (where "The" is not part of the name) and "The National Party". The page view stats quite clearly bear this out. Morever, note that I am not saying that the page view stats are in any way a policy, but rather that they are clear evidence that policy is being implemented correctly - i.e. that the title is not ambiguous in its current form, because obviously very few people are confused by the title. Number 57 22:59, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The search facility is not case-sensitive, so a reader is presented with exactly the same options whatever case they type in.
As to the page view evidence, I see no evidence of what proportion of the readers who landed on the current title were looking for the Grenada article; if I have missed it, please point it out again, but it could be anywhere between 0% and 100%. All we know is that not many people landed there; we don't know what they were actually looking for in a Wikipedia search. However, I have presented clear evidence above that a significant proportion of Google searchers use the prefix "the" even when that is not part of the party's formal name. Where is the evidence that Wikipedia searchers are immune from that? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:11, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The whole context of the proportion of readers coming here is that (a) the number is very small given the total number of National parties out there (b) I would expect a small number of readers interested in this topic. Of course we will never know what proportion of readers are here mistakenly, but could you answer the question of why a hatnote is insufficient. Number 57 16:55, 11 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We can hatnote anything, but we have a policy of when we do it. Hatnoting this is leaving the undismabiguated page to contain one of the more minor of the topics referred to the phrase. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:59, 15 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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Any additional comments:
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.
Relisting comment: Several aspects of the decision have been discussed so far, but the discussion so has not considered whether this party is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC for the term "The National Party". Note that the policy question of primatyopicness is not whether any other articles exist of that precise title: "A topic is primary for a term, with respect to usage, if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term".
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:11, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • As stated above, there do not appear to be any other parties in the world with this precise title, and as a result, I can't see why it needs disambiguation. The fact that it now has a hatnote should be enough to redirect anyone who comes here accidentally looking for another article on an article-less "National Party" (ones without "The", not ones without an article on Wikipedia). However, I would suggest that the very low page view stats (less than 5 views a day) strongly suggest that, given the number of National parties around which in theory readers could be searching for and ending up here, it looks like very few people are here by accident, and therefore that the article title is appropriate. Number 57 22:50, 8 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I also specifically got into WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in my comments: "no one has identified any other National Parties that would need 'The', it's not really an issue." No one has suggested that readers may be looking for some other subject with this title, and Number 57's page view statistics show pretty clearly that they're not. The hat note will take care of any potential confusion.--Cúchullain t/c 11:51, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Cuchullain: @Number 57: Please re-read the policy. The test is not whether there are any other parties with this precise title. The test is whether people searching for this phrase are more likely to want this party than any other.
    That seems unlikely given that a sentence referring to a "Foo Party" will usually put a definite article before it, as in these examples: "In the USA, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party ...", or "In the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party are ...". Google books searches confirm this distribution of the phrases' use in sources: "the national party" -wikipedia -"books, llc" gives nearly 10 million hits, whereas a search for "the national party" ghana -wikipedia -"books, llc" gives 461 hits.
    To test whether searches with a definite article are common, I tested Google's autocomplete in a private browsing window (so no cookies). When I entered "the national par", autocomplete offered "the national party" as the 4th of 4 options. When I tried the test with "the democratic party", I didn't need to fill in as much of the term: once I had typed "the democ", the second option presented was "the democratic party". So it's clear that use of the definite article is common enough in Google searches to get high into the autocomplete list even for "The Democratic Party", despite the fact that the set index at Democratic Party doesn't list any party's formal title as beginning with "The".
    I checked this out further on Google Adwords. In April2013-March2014, there were an average of 33,100 searches per month for "Democratic Party", against 1,300 searches a month for "The Democratic Party". Since there appear to be no parties anywhere formally titled "The Democratic Party", that means that 1 out of every 25 Google searches added a superfluous definite article.
    Why assume that wikipedia searches are conducted any differently? Where is the evidence that any of the readers who landed on the wikipedia page The National Party were looking for the defunct Ghananain organisation which last contested an election 19 years ago, and in its 6 years of existence only had 2 seats in parliament? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:13, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Correction. Dunno what prompted to use Ghana, but as pointed out below it should of course have been Grenada. Duh! :(
Anyway, the results for Ghana are even more stark: "the national party" grenada -wikipedia -"books, llc" gives only 63 gbooks hits. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 13:56, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm well aware of what the policy says, thanks. I'm saying there's no evidence any substantial number of readers are looking for other topics under "The National Party". It's just not borne out by the page views or by the list of other similarly titled articles. As such, this is the de facto PRIMARYTOPIC. You're welcome to !vote however you like, but my philosophy is, if it ain't broke, don't bend over backwards trying to fix it.--Cúchullain t/c 13:21, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) @BrownHairedGirl: I did read the policy, hence the second part of my response above with regards to the page view statistics. If people were using "the National Party" to search for other National parties (of which there are a lot) and ended up coming here, I would expect to see a fairly high number of views. However, the fact that it has fewer than 5 a day (and that figure is heavily skewed by the recent interest related to this discussion - there were only eight views in the whole of March, three in February and two in January) is very strong evidence to suggest that this is not happening, and therefore the subject of the article is indeed the primary topic. Number 57 13:23, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PS - the party is from Grenada not Ghana - an important distinction as the Grenadian parliament only has 15 seats, so it had over 10% of the seats! It is also of note as despite its small size, it was (briefly) the ruling party of the country. Number 57 13:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The evidence that not many people landed on that page is evidence that not many people entered that term into the search box. However, it is not evidence that any of them were looking for the page to which they will be directed if they enter that term.
I am very surprised to see a claim the list of other similarly titled articles does not support the notion that this is a primary. I count about 20 pages in the there who title is National Party (parethesised disambiguator), and any one of them will be commonly referred to as "The National Party". So how on earth does anyone claim that this meets WP:CRITERIA's test of "Precision – The title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects."? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Because it is the only one whose name is actually "The National Party". But anyway, I don't see why this needs to be justified - what does need to be justified is why adding (Grenada) onto the end of this article's name is needed. Number 57 14:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Nothing else actually has this title, and people seem to be finding them just fine the way they're currently titled judging by the page view statistics. Again, if it ain't broke...--Cúchullain t/c 14:28, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The policy test of preciseness is not the narrow one of whether other topics share the same exact name. The policy test is whether "the title is sufficiently precise to unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects."
@Cuchullain: @Number 57: please can both of you confirm whether you believe that "The National Party" is sufficiently precise to identify it as the Grenadian party, rather than any of the other parties referred to 10million Gbooks hits as "the national party". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 16:34, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think my position has been sufficiently clear. Yes, the title is easily enough to distinguish it from other subjects by the addition of "The", and therefore it shouldn't be any more precise than that. Yes, it is the primary topic of "The National Party", and the only one of our existing articles that would realistically be titled that on Wikipedia, making this effective natural disambiguation. And no, I don't see any evidence that any detectible number of readers are coming here looking for something else or otherwise getting confused, which is the only real reason we should ever add disambiguation to a title. Again, you can !vote how you like.--Cúchullain t/c 16:47, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Cúchullain:, in common usage, there are at least 20 other articles which could be called "The National Party". It is wp policy not to include the word "the" except in specific cases, but wp is not written for the small number of editors well-versed in the nuances of titling-policies; it is written for a general audience, who will take a generalist view of what that title would mean in the many other contexts in which they encounter it. If they read books, they will find that in all but 63 cases out of about 10 million, "the national party" refers to something other than that Grenadian party.
If you want to amend WP:CRITERIA to say "unambiguously identify the article's subject and distinguish it from other subjects in the eyes of readers who are fully conversant with Wikipedia's policies on article titles", then let us know how that gets on. But current policy does not qualify the concept of ambiguity in that way. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 17:27, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion the title is distinguished perfectly well in light of WP:AT, which also requires conciseness and naturalness - something an artificial disambiguator lacks. More to the point, inserting additional disambiguation on top of the natural disambiguation wouldn't benefit any detectible number of readers, so we should default to the subject's actual name.--Cúchullain t/c 18:26, 9 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The number-of-readers test is not actually part of the policy. Conciseness and naturalness are not the only criteria. The WP:CRITERIA test of precision is whether the title identifies the subject unambiguously, and the very clear evidence of real world usage is that "the national party" refers overwhelmingly to topics other than this one. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:56, 10 May 2014 (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.
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