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Requested move

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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. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: pages not moved. There's really too much going on in this discussion. It's clear that there's no consensus for the full official name "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" in the titles. What's less clear is how much support there is for "Yugoslavian" --> "Yugoslav", and how much support there is for the last move listed, the template. I suggest making separate requests, one for the template, and a multi-move request for changing the demonym. I'm closing this one because there's not support for the full request in this case. - GTBacchus(talk) 18:05, 28 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]


– These are the original titles from before Number 57 (talk · contribs) started, well, being a jerk about it. We discussed it at length at Template talk:Yugoslavian elections, but they insist on two things that I believe to be quite apparently wrong: the wrong demonym - it's "Yugoslav" rather than "Yugoslavian"; and the use of the same demonym for the series of articles about FR Yugoslavia just like it's used for the articles about SFR Yugoslavia, which implies a simple succession, and that in turn is simply false, and contrary to the naming convention at Yugoslavia, Breakup of Yugoslavia, etc. (I'm not hell-bent on the KoY part because that country mostly matched SFRY as far as the application of the term Yugoslavia/Yugoslav; if a compromise would be to just fix the demonym there, that's fine, although it would still be preferable to use the full title because the preceding articles in the series use the precise KoSCH names.) Per Wikipedia:Article titles, names need to be sufficiently precise, and saying that there was a "Yugoslav election" in 1992 is insufficiently precise because it's confusing with the process of the breakup of Yugoslavia. The term "Yugoslav" continued to primarily refer to the entirety of former Yugoslavia even after it broke up, rather than just the rump state formed by Serbia and Montenegro, despite the purposeful distortion of a naming scheme promulgated by Slobodan Milošević &co. I see no apparent downside to using proper names other than title length, which is a minor issue in comparison to the former problem. In fact, using FRY is a compromise enough - it could also be simply "Serbia and Montenegro" if we were really after the gist of things, because most of that time the FRY wasn't even internationally recognized as such (exactly because others weren't falling for the trick). Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose The standard naming format for election articles is demonym + election type, year. The demonym for Yugoslavia remained the same throughout the country's history (with the exception of the era when it was known as the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes), so the articles are all currently correctly named. There is no confusion in the titling as the years are included in every case. As for the issue between Yugoslav and Yugoslavian, both are used, with the latter by far the most common in everyday English usage. In addition, the claim that the requested titles were the were the original ones is false - some of them were created by myself at the current titles (see here and here for examples). Number 57 17:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment - Joy is right about the correct being Yugoslav, and not Yugoslavian, despite the latter being often wrongly used (not by a chance more used than the first). With regard of the rest, I have still not fully decided, altough some of the reasons are a bit vague. The issue is that the country was in fact named Yugoslavia all the way until 2003, and we can agree or not, but the name was kept intentionally because the country did in fact tried to continue with the previous SFR Yugoslavia. The name Serbia and Montenegro (the only 2 former SFR Yugoslav republics which kept united as FR Yugoslavia) was only adopted more than a decade later, so it would be completely illogical in my view to rename it to S&M elections. FkpCascais (talk) 21:32, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Who says it is correct? There is no language board for the English language, so there is no-one to say what is correct or not. Whilst Yugoslav is more formal, Yugoslavian is far more commonly used in everyday speech. Number 57 21:41, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Well, technically, both are correct (Yugoslav and Yugoslavian) but Yugoslav has been much more used, specially when formally used. The problem Number 57 is that we had somehow "informarly" agreed to use "Yugoslav" on WP, so if you check most articles are ordered as "Yugoslav". I see no point in breaking that... FkpCascais (talk) 21:52, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, and notice I'm not proposing that. I'm simply saying we use the FR prefix because conflating demonyms like this is contrary to common sense - these simply weren't Yugoslav elections in the same sense that the previous Yugoslav elections were. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 22:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
        • Yes, the FR has been commonly used here, something like DR in DR Congo, although two Congo´s exist simultaneously so there the reason for that, but this prefix of FR has been widely accepted as disambiguatory factor for the pre-1992 Yugoslavia, and the one that existed afterwords, which was quite different, and far from being just a name change... But Joy, the "trick" reasons you mention are a bit of POV by your side, cause the name was also kept because of many other reasons, such as leaving the door open for other republics to come back (it may seem silly for some today, but back than it wasn´t that much), or because the country did in fact contained more republics than just Serbia (Montenegro, and even provinces status was not that clear back then), because many people did wanted to have a continuation of "Yugoslav" system, etc. I mean, I know some people from the republics that left Yugoslavia in early 1990s may have the tendency for seing things in the perspective you see, but not everything donne during that period was just an "evil trick", although many things were, but it is not a rule... :) FkpCascais (talk) 03:02, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • JFTR I stand corrected, those two histories do show you created those two articles at the time, as did another user, but the existing names from the much older articles (2007) were all disambiguated, as is apparent from those other article histories. That's what I was referring to as original. Bringing up this argument doesn't help the discussion much, but it does help people see the pattern of your disruptive behavior, culminating with the recent null-edits to impede further page moves - I guess that was just a silly demonstration of WP:POINT/WP:OWN, given that you know that I'm an admin so those null-edits wouldn't actually have a practical purpose had I decided to move again. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:27, 21 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • I have also notified the other editor involved in the previous discussions on Template talk:Yugoslavian elections (I would have notified PaxEquilibrium, but they have been inactive since 2009). Number 57 17:54, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. A complex case. Good arguments on all sides; but I think recognition is best served by retaining the present forms. I can't see that anything of similar weight is sacrificed. (Ah, politics.) NoeticaTea? 07:09, 23 August 2011 (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. No further edits should be made to this section.

Rename

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It’s obvious from nearly every other page describing a parliamentary election in Yugoslavia that “Yugoslav” in the preferred demonym over “Yugoslavian”, so why hasn’t this page, along with 1992–93 Yugoslavian parliamentary election, 1996 Yugoslavian parliamentary election and 2000 Yugoslavian general election, switched to using the term “Yugoslav”? (The Professor (Time Lord) (talk) 06:21, 18 June 2019 (UTC))[reply]

I moved it but it was reverted. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 23:23, 12 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 3 November 2023

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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. There's no consensus to move here. Best, (closed by non-admin page mover) Reading Beans (talk) 04:03, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

– Over a decade ago, I made an argument to fix the names of these articles, but it was muddled by a variety of less relevant issues. The fundamental issue here is that the series of articles about the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), best known as simply Serbia and Montenegro, are not the same as the series of articles about Yugoslavia, because that would imply a simple succession, which is not the case, and contrary to the naming convention at the main space articles Yugoslavia, Breakup of Yugoslavia, etc.

Saying that there was a "Yugoslavian election" in 1992 is insufficiently precise and ambiguous, and especially confusing with the process of the breakup of Yugoslavia. The term Yugoslav continued to primarily refer to the entirety of former Yugoslavia after it broke up, rather than just the rump state formed by Serbia and Montenegro, despite the purposefully distorted naming scheme promoted by their government at the time. During all of this time, and indeed during most of the existence of the FRY, it was not recognized as such, because others were uninterested in the FRY propaganda, cf. Arbitration Commission of the Peace Conference on Yugoslavia, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 47/1 etc, until after the 2000 election and the overthrow of Slobodan Milošević, and later the Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Using the self-proclaimed name contrary to this real-world consensus is just weird. The encyclopedia should describe the state of the facts, not some vaguely fictionalized version of it. The average English reader probably does not know the exact dating of these events in relation to which state was making which weird naming claims, and we should not expect them to do so (by depending on just the years to distinguish this).

To my knowledge, the only other place where we use the term Yugoslavia in an ambiguous manner like this is with the article "NATO bombing of Yugoslavia" - there were in fact several NATO bombing campaigns in different parts of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, but this one that targetted the FRY in 1999 was the most notable one, and it somehow stuck. That should not be used as a precedent to refer to the FRY as just Yugoslavia in election articles.

The new names would also fit the content of those articles much better, as the elections tables are consistently split between Serbia and Montenegro in each of them already. --Joy (talk) 12:25, 3 November 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Reading Beans (talk) 13:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Relisting comment: Well, relisting. I'm seeing opposes here. Reading Beans (talk) 13:24, 10 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose I agree with making it clear that this wasn't SFR Yugoslavia but that it was FR Yugoslavia. However, I disagree that it should be called Serbia and Montenegro. The sources provided above suggest that the country was still known as Yugoslavia and that it wasn't and still isn't referred to as Serbia and Montengro before 2003. I would suggest renaming to XXXX Federal Republic of Yugoslavia parliamentary election (general election for 2000) as an alternative. Stevie fae Scotland (talk) 15:03, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, I'm not sure if I made it unclear, but the sources suggest that the country was *not* generally known as Yugoslavia, because OSCE, CoE and HRW clearly weren't taking the term FRY at face value; CSCE did *not* use FRY at all; and even if EU used the term FRY it was done while distinguishing it from former Yugoslavia. That is hardly consensus for FRY being an actual WP:COMMONNAME - when even these institutional sources are so inconsistent and often clumsy about it, we can't just assume that a term is just fine. Our article on the topic has long linked to the CIA World Factbook article from 2000 at [11] which uses S&M and introduces the term FRY in scary quotes and explains how the US explicitly argued against it. When all these election articles actually describe elections in Serbia and in Montenegro, how does it help the average reader today to use a weird title in the title instead? --Joy (talk) 17:32, 12 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose The country was known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until 2003. This usage is seen contemporaneously by organizations such as Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and the PACE. Curbon7 (talk) 10:12, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Supporting the proposed alternative of moving to xxxx FRY election, as an obvious clarification device. Curbon7 (talk) 10:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    @Curbon7 there's no doubt that you can find references to it like that, but that's not the whole picture. The article you link from HRW is from 1999, and it continues to use the term Yugoslavia and Yugoslav casually just like their doc from 1997 that I listed above, while at the same time mentioning 'Former Yugoslavia' in the name of the ICTY twice and explaining the separate Montenegrin government as well. The UN link you pasted doesn't work, can you go back to wherever you found it and try to generate a working permalink? The CoE document is from 2001, at which point FRY had its sanctions lifted and been generally recognized. And, again, just 2 years after that, they themselves renamed the country again. --Joy (talk) 10:25, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Montenegro (as sub-entities under the FRY banner) did exist and did hold subnational elections (such as the 2000 Serbian parliamentary election) which is what that section is referring to. The United Nations PDF can be found here in The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was admitted as a Member of the United Nations by General Assembly resolution A/RES/55/12 of 1 November 2000. Curbon7 (talk) 10:32, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, and that link ironically is titled "Yugoslavia and Successor States", and FRY is indeed listed just like FYROM is listed. It's transient names that haven't got a critical amount of meaning to the average English reader today to be worth dealing with in article titles. --Joy (talk) 10:54, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Also worth adding that, per the Agreement on Succession Issues of the Former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the FRY is not considered the sole legal successor to the SFR Yugoslavia; rather each former constituent state are considered to be equal legal successors. As such, I think moving to xxxx FRY election is more unequivocated, such that it completely bypasses the Serbian irredentist claim that this was the sole legal successor state. Curbon7 (talk) 21:04, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Such articles should not refer to Yugoslavia unqualified since the FRY and earlier Yugoslavias are not the same country (i.e. not mere name changes as in cases of change of Kingdom of SHS to Kingdom of Yugoslavia or People's Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. If used unqualified, the term will certainly be misleading to casual readers - without exception - leading them to conclusion that the FRY is a continuation of the SFRY. Alternatively, The relevant articles should become 2000 Federal Republic of Yugoslavia general election etc. to draw at least some distinction, although the readers would be best served with the originally proposed titles.--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Just to clarify, I did not examine published reliable English-language sources to determine the common name. I understand from the above discussion that the sources do not refer to the country as (unqualified) Yugoslavia in the relevant context and my argument is that the Wiki should not refer to it in unqualified terms either not just because of the potential for conflation of two different states.--Tomobe03 (talk) 10:38, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Which brings up the obvious issue of why shouldn't we actually examine not just contemporary but modern-day secondary sources that talk about elections in former Yugoslavia to try to glean an actual consensus of reliable sources about it... --Joy (talk) 11:01, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. I disagree with the nominator's current crusade to rename every article and category retroactively from Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to Serbia and Montenegro before the 2003 Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro. What's next? Are we going to rename 1992 Yugoslav Constitution from the name that appears in this very constitution? Foreign usage to call the country between 1992 an 2003 was, at best, inconsistent, but the examples given above demonstrate that expressions like the remainder of Yugoslavia, rump Yugoslavia or small Yugoslavia were frequently if not majorly used, concurrent with former Yugoslavia for the larger territory. And, of course, the country called itself FR Yugoslavia. Place Clichy (talk) 15:09, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'll just say for the record that we've had a bad interaction before at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2023 November 8#Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Right now these election articles are named in a way that does not distinguish it from former Yugoslavia, so I find it hard to understand such opposition to the move. And, yes, the article title "1992 Yugoslav Constitution" is also very confusing with former Yugoslavia, and supporting it as if it was axiomatic is effectively supporting the state-sponsored propaganda from the darkest days of that state, which I find utterly nonsensical. --Joy (talk) 15:15, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Bad interaction? Not really from the way I feel, otherwise we'd lose all hopes in constructive debate. These election articles are named in a way that does distinguish them from former Yugoslavia, because "former Yugoslavia" did not hold elections in 1992, 1996 or 2000. I agree that the 1992 constitution article could be renamed to a title using "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" for clarity, but certainly not the retroactive "Serbia and Montenegro". The fact that these were indeed dark days in the history of this country is irrelevant on the way it is called. You won't call the Ottoman Empire of ca. 1915 the "Young Turks Empire" or another made up name not supported by historiography just because you don't like the name it had or what it did, or because it had lost provinces. The entire logic is flawed. Place Clichy (talk) 16:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I addressed the matter of distinguishing by year in the nomination already - it's a bad idea to have to keep the readers on their toes.
    It doesn't make sense to compare this with Ottoman Empire at the end of its existence because there wasn't a non-historiographical name for it like that, was there?
    Whereas the logic of calling the new state containing Serbia and Montenegro, which ended up naming itself Serbia and Montenegro later - exactly that - is pretty obvious. --Joy (talk) 08:15, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    The logic to use Serbia and Montenegro for the country which ended up naming itself as such is not as obvious as you say. It is, indeed, like calling the Ottoman Empire "Turkey" in its final years, or calling the Republic of Macedonia "North Macedonia". There are cases in which historiography as retained another name that the name a country called itself, the Byzantine Empire being a famous example. However, you still have to demonstrate that it is the case here. All you have said is that you disagree with the FR Yugoslavia presenting itself as the legitimate successor of pre-1991 Yugoslavia. I would lean to agree with you on that point, but it does not change its name. You want to retroactively change its name to make your point stronger in that other debate, which is discouraged per WP:POINT. Place Clichy (talk) 17:14, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no retroactive change; as mentioned several times before, we know for a fact that the United States did not recognize FRY under that name at all and instead called it Serbia and Montenegro for most of its existence. I have demonstrated with links to contemporary primary sources, separate from the US government, how none of the sources were able to just keep using the term "Yugoslavia" for this state without actually saying "oh it's actually Serbia and Montenegro, not what everyone recognized as Yugoslavia up to now". --Joy (talk) 08:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lean oppose. I can see the value in being clearer to readers, but I'm not seeing "Serbia and Montenegro" as achieving that. It seems far more likely the reader will read "Serbia and Montenegro" as the current two separate states, and this would be certainly more likely than them intuiting some particular viewpoint regarding the theory of the succession of states from "Yugoslav". Using a contemporaneous name seems a consistent and defensible decision, and we appear to reflect name change in the neighbouring (North) Macedonia, with the 2014 Macedonian general election being followed by the 2019 North Macedonian presidential election. CMD (talk) 02:51, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not quite following the logic, if you put two terms like that in the title, why would they read separation from that? It would require linking Serbia and Montenegro in the lead section, which in turn leads to an explanation because the compound term does exist anyway, because, again, this state was renamed to that eventually. They gave up on both the particular viewpoint on succession of states and then they gave up on forcing the ambiguous terminology. Why can't we give up on it decades later?
    The Macedonian matter is a whole other can of worms, and it's not quite analogous because the Socialist Republic of Macedonia changed directly into the Republic of Macedonia with out a violent breakup for which they had a peace conference with an arbitration commission etc. I for one would be fine with renaming those election articles to say 'Republic of' or 'North' because it would avoid ambiguity and help the modern-day reader to easily connect the dots. --Joy (talk) 08:40, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not reading any of the other comments above arguing for the name due to it implying a particular succession of statehood, so I don't think this is an issue they have not given up on. The argument seems to be defaulting to the used name. Place Clichy provides an example that comes to my mind as well on this topic; we use Byzantine to override the locally preferred name following quite substantial preference in the historiography. That does not seem to have happened here in either direction, for what was at any rate a historically very short-lived entity. CMD (talk) 03:41, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly, references in historical works to this entity will tell us at best likewise "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, actually Serbia and Montenegro, not what everyone recognized as Yugoslavia up to now". We don't override anything by making a change, in fact using just "Yugoslavia" and "Yugoslav" to refer to this state is overriding the local and global consensus. Right now concision is overriding all the other article title criteria in the names of these articles, which is against the spirit and letter of that policy. --Joy (talk) 08:49, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose - I have seen little evidence that the name "Serbia and Montenegro" was consistently in use back at that time, and contemporary newspapers such as [12], [13], [14] seem to simply call it Yugoslavia. I see very little case for making these moves, all the more so given that the entity of Serbia and Montenegro doesn't actually exist any more as of 2023. I'm also not sure why Joy is bludgeoning the discussion above and badgering every oppose !voter, this seems rather unusual for a normally very astute and experienced Wikipedian. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 16:45, 15 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    There is no doubt that there were references to it as Yugoslavia, but newspapers are notoriously casual about some of these things and are not known to be better than other reliable sources. The reason that I get so visibly annoyed by these discussions is because I just don't seem to observe a lot of rigor in these !votes. I'm sorry, I know there are much better ways to argue these points. For example, we can try to have a look at Google Books Ngrams for Yugoslavia,Yugoslav,former Yugoslavia,former Yugoslav,Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,Serbia and Montenegro. I hope it's that much more apparent from that graph that it's just not right to keep casually using the term Yugoslavia for a place that just doesn't correspond to the generally known meaning of that term. --Joy (talk) 09:44, 16 November 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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